


kiss him, will i diss him? i don't know, but i miss him

by the_aesthetic_of_happiness



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Banter, Dragon Riders, Dragons, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Magic Powers, Magic School, Magical Realism, Pining, Roommates, School Dances, Secret Identity, Tournaments, kind of??
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:09:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28257456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_aesthetic_of_happiness/pseuds/the_aesthetic_of_happiness
Summary: On day one of dragon training academy, Chenle met his archenemy.
Relationships: Park Jisung/Zhong Chen Le
Comments: 20
Kudos: 54
Collections: NCTV Secret Santa 2020





	1. freshman year

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magnoliafilms](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnoliafilms/gifts).



> for my 2020 secret santa, mags! I hope you enjoy <3

On day one of dragon training academy, Chenle met his archenemy.

They met as freshmen. That was already a bad omen. The rule of the academy was that everyone hated the freshmen—most of the freshmen hated the freshmen. They were like rats: there were too many of them, they were hard to get rid of, and they were scrawny and had bad hair.

Chenle agreed with this. His older sisters, who had long since graduated from the academy, had told him so many stories about how entitled the underclassmen were. Like, they would always be scampering around the halls and accidentally bonking the other students with their too-big satchels, or they would hang out in flocks in the stairwell which made it exorbitantly difficult to climb up the stairs without stepping on someone’s baby finger and sending them to the infirmary so they could get the nurse’s infamous paper towel-wrapped plastic bag of enchanted yet pungent-smelling ice.

Long story short, Chenle was determined not to be one of the freshmen. The fact that he himself was a freshman was irrelevant. 

The first impression he had of his archenemy was that Park Jisung was a showoff. No, Park Jisung was a fucking egotist. What kind of bitch flew to school on dragonback? He was obviously trying to prove himself as the top dog, that’s what. Especially since most freshmen hadn’t even learned how to fly yet.

That fateful day, the very first day of school, the courtyard full of students gasped and tittered as they pointed up at the small shape of a dragon winging toward them in the sky. Chenle turned away from tending to his own ride to see what all the commotion was about—he turned just in time to see the dragon rider touch down onto the courtyard grass. Their dragon was ombre-colored, scales shaped like teardrops, with a warm amber glow around its eyes and claws. On its back was a skinny kid wearing a sweatshirt and jeans.

Jeans meant he hadn’t received his uniform yet. Everyone knew that people who hadn’t received their uniforms yet were scholarship students. 

“They can fly,” whispered someone nearby. “Scholarship kid! And they know how to fly!”

Chenle coughed and cleared his throat. “You know, flying isn’t as hard as you think it is.”

The kid gave him a look, sizing him up. 

Chenle looked away after a moment. He knew he was skinny and short and probably didn’t look a thing like someone who knew how to fly.

He discreetly glared over at the scholarship kid, who was dismounting, seemingly unaware of the buzz they had started. If only Chenle had thought about making a big dramatic entrance just like them—rather, he had tried to play it humble by landing his dragon across the street from the academy and then walking in on foot to appear like all the other noob freshmen who didn’t have a clue how to ride. This was what he got for humility, huh? What a disgrace. Chenle’s middle name was clout.

Alas, Chenle’s second middle name was also goldfish, to commemorate how he had the attention span of one. In a little while, someone had found out that the kid’s name was Park Jisung and their pronouns were he him; the information spread through the crowd like a wildfire, but by then, Chenle was too distracted by the strawberry scones at the breakfast buffet to be interested anymore. Reaching for the final pastry—they really were so perfectly buttery and flaky—his hand unexpectedly bumped against someone else’s. 

He looked up with a scowl. Scholarship blinked back at him.

“Back off,” Chenle said.

Jisung looked at the half-eaten scone on Chenle’s paper plate. “You already had one,” he said.

“Eight,” Chenle corrected. He’d eaten eight.

“Oh. Sorry. You already _ate_ one.”

Chenle stared at him, then laughed. “What? Oh, fine, you have it.”

As Jisung thanked him and nibbled on the scone, Chenle’s eyes wandered over to Jisung’s ombre-amber dragon, which was waiting patiently a pace away. It wore a saddle but nothing else. 

Interesting.

“How come don’t you use reins?” 

Jisung glanced over. The angle of the sun illuminated his face, and oh—ahh, he was really pretty. Small eyes, and fluffy hair, and a cute nose, and pretty lips. Chenle self-consciously reached up to swipe the scone crumbs off his own lips.

“I don’t need reins when I ride my dragon,” Jisung said prettily.

“Yeah, but why?” Chenle said.

Jisung smiled and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I can speak dragon.”

“What? No. That can’t be right.” As far as he’d been taught, dragons didn’t even have a language. “You’re capping.”

“It’s true!” Jisung said. “It’s a one in a million type of superpower.”

Oh, so it was a gift.

Each of the students at the academy possessed a unique phenotype of magical powers, it being one half of the admission requirements—the other half was being interested in dragon riding. Chenle’s gift was teleportation. He didn’t use it much, though, because he hadn’t gotten full control of it, but his parents had told him that at the academy they’d teach him how to get better. He was looking forward to it.

“So that’s your gift? Talking to dragons?” 

Jisung paused, looking unexpectedly uncertain at the question when he’d seemed confident only moments before. “Well . . . no.”

“Then what is your gift?”

“That’s really none of your business.”

Chenle raised his eyebrows.

“I’m just saying that you don’t need to have a gift of dragon-speak in order to acknowledge that dragons have a language. Anyone who says otherwise is just uneducated.”

Uneducated. Chenle had learned to read at two years old, had attended private school for all eleven years of his life, and knew more languages than anyone else in his family. Sure, his grades were a little shitty (read: shamefully shitty), but no one in his life had ever before dared to call him uneducated.

“That’s no way to talk to someone who just gave you their last scone,” Chenle said.

Jisung’s dragon chuffed. Jisung patted its snout.

“She says you’re an imbecile,” he told Chenle.

“She doesn’t even know me!”

“Yeah but she can sense it.”

“That’s a load of dragon dung. You’re a phony, aren’t you? I bet you are.”

Jisung rolled his eyes, stuffed the rest of the scone in his mouth, and began to walk away. No one had ever walked away from Chenle in the middle of a conversation before. Okay, so the pretty boy was a _rude_ boy.

“Just so you know, your dragon’s mean!” he yelled at his receding figure.

“Muffin can’t hear you!” Jisung shouted back.

Muffin. What a lame name for a dragon. 

Victory chortled from where she had ambled up beside Chenle. Chenle gave her a dirty look and she stopped and put on her innocent face, the one with the big round eyes. She obviously understood human; Chenle had always been sure of it. And—wait, if dragons could understand the language of humans, then could humans learn to understand dragon?

Chenle set down his plate and glanced furtively left and right to check if anyone was watching. Then he leaned in and tried to imitate one of Victory’s characteristic burping noises

The dragon looked unimpressed.

“Am I Doing It Right,” Chenle burped out each word with the lowest pitch his prepubescent self could muster.

She sneezed into his face. He yelped, wiping dragon snot off his cheeks.

“Ew! _Vic_!”

That was the first and last day he ever tried to communicate with her. It also marked the day he first faced off against Park Jisung. It wouldn’t be the last.

###

_Dear Mom and Dad and everyone else,_

_Hey!! Writing to you to let you know how I’m doing. The first week of classes just ended. I’m doing good. My teachers seem friendly and the food is good here, so that’s really great. The dorms are nice, and I got a room all to myself this year, which is sick. Looking forward to spending the year here._

_Victory really likes to graze on the school cattle. I promise I won’t let it get out of hand! I’m glad she’s enjoying herself though. I was worried she might dislike the change of environment but her stables seem really spacious and luxurious so I’m not even worried anymore haha._

_I hope you all are doing well! I’ll write again soon._

_xoxo, Lele_

###

He unpacked his suitcases with his clothes, his mirrors, an ample amount of goat-flavored dragon treats, and the selective packs of the expensive-ass beef-flavored dragon treats he’d packed just in case the campus snack shop didn’t offer them. His dragon loved beef. Even though she was named Victory to match the theme of all the Zhong dragon names (examples included Liberty, Honor, and Valor, blah blah), Chenle should probably have named her Bessie or something to represent just how enthusiastic she was about consuming all things bovine.

He fed her in between classes, bustling to the stables to make sure she was happy and well taken care of. School was nice. Chenle got used to eating scones and pancakes every day for breakfast, got used to the hard, straight-backed seats in every lecture hall, got used to the way his uniform would stick to his chest on the hot summer days during dragon training practice. He wished autumn would come sooner. It was so hot that he got into the bad habit of undoing the upper two buttons of his shirt every day, all day—something his parents would’ve scolded him for, yet alas, he was out of their reach and sight now. He was his own person now. Roughing it alone in a faraway academy, with scones and pancakes.

He wasn’t truly alone, though. Soon enough he met two other kids, both of them a year above him, because no way was he becoming friends with other freshmen. Second-years were fair game. He was happy to have made friends with them.

“Made friends? No, you bullied us into being your friends,” said Renjun.

“What? That’s fake news.”

“You definitely bullied us,” said Donghyuck, playing along. “You said you’d sic Victory on us if we didn’t cooperate.”

“I did not!” said Chenle. 

Renjun and Donghyuck were chill. He knew he’d made a good choice with them. They were funny and brusque and seemed to be good friends with one another, and, despite all their teasing, they eventually did welcome Chenle into their ranks. Soon enough, Chenle had adjusted nicely: he had a friend group, he was aiming to enter the school’s riding team as soon as tryouts started in the winter, and he was beginning to be known around campus as the one who cracked jokes in class and got along with all the teachers despite his perpetual rank of #267 out of the entire freshman class (which consisted of 270 people).

Everything was normal. It was just as he expected. There was only one thing that was off about it—and it had to do with Park Jisungl.

He was everywhere. He went to all the dragon riding practices. He averaged at rank #3 in terms of weighted academic excellence. Everyone knew who he was. Then again, everyone knew who Chenle was—but people knew Chenle, knew him in the way he asked people he thought were cool out to dinner, knew him in the way he flirted with anything with legs, knew him in the way he wore rich boy shoes and a wrinkled uniform. But people didn’t _know_ Jisung. He was an anomaly. A mystery. He was the elusive student in the back of the class with the borrowed uniform who quietly excelled at everything with his head down low and his textbooks clasped to his chest as he hurried across campus between classes.

“Hey,” said Chenle one day, on a Thursday riding practice where he and the other boy were sitting a distance apart from each other in the pews. The two of them were the only freshmen who went to these practices yet they had never spoken for as long as Chenle could remember. “Hey. Park?”

“Mm,” said Jisung, who was taking notes, glancing up ever so often to study the players overhead.

One of the team members, a senior named Yuta, lobbed the ball in the general direction of the goalpost. It didn’t look like it would go in, but at the last minute his teammate Jaehyun spun his dragon around and its tail smacked the ball right into the circular hoop, causing the keeper, Seulgi, to let out a groan of shame. Yuta and Jaehyun cheered while the coach blew her whistle to tell them to reset for round two.

“What are you writing down over there?” Chenle asked.

“Notes,” said Jisung.

“Yeah, why? Are you planning on becoming a journalist or something? Gonna spectate and record all the school’s games?” Those people existed.

Jisung glanced at him. “Oh, no, I’m planning on being part of the team. And since the coach won’t let me play yet since I’m a freshman, this is the best way for me to gain knowledge.”

One of the team’s forwards, Yerim, caught the ball in the crook of her arm. Chaeyoung was gaining right behind her, but Yerim swiftly urged her dragon into a loop-de-loop that forced Chaeyoung to rear back, and then Yerim used her resulting momentum to hurl the ball over to Mark who threw it to Jaehyun who scored again.

“So you want to enter the team next semester,” mused Chenle.

“Yes,” said Jisung, still scribbling notes.

“There might be an issue with that. You see, they won’t let more than one newbie onto the team, if any at all. That’s the way it works—you have to be really good to be accepted.”

“That’ll be me.”

“Fat chance. I’m trying out too, you know.”

Jisung gave him the look he always gave him, the bored one that bordered on condescension. “Yeah. And?”

Chenle let out a long breath and leaned back into his seat, putting distance between them again as he returned to watching the team play against itself in the sky.

Jisung obviously didn’t come here to fool around. He was serious about dragon riding in the same way he was serious about literally everything else. Too bad. Because if there was one thing that Chenle took seriously, it was dragons. And he was going to be the freshman who entered the team come spring—if it was the last thing he did.

###

It seemed like Jisung could actually talk to dragons. Chenle would catch him whispering to the hatchlings in the pens, or sitting for long durations of time during lunch period in which he would do nothing but lean against his dragon’s side and nod his head as if he were listening to some internal monologue of hers. Not to mention, he was always going to the headmaster’s office, meeting up with teachers after class was over, or chatting with the school librarian, Soeun. No one talked with the librarian unless they had a reason. The library was such a dismal place to be—for the record, Chenle thought that the center of literature for an esteemed private academy like this one should at _least_ have a proper ventilation system. Not the moldy air conditioning that was currently installed. He marvelled at how Soeun’s lungs were still in order—and she was a brilliant singer, at that.

Jisung, Jisung, Jisung. The thorn in Chenle’s side. For some reason it aggravated him that Jisung was good at school _and_ good at dragon riding— _and_ he was a scholarship student, meaning that he came from a humble upbringing. It’s not like Chenle was jealous. He didn’t mind getting poor grades, and the fact that his family was wealthy wasn’t something that he could control or something that he felt he should feel guilty about. Rather he was just . . . argh, something about Jisung _irked_ him somehow.

Maybe it was that no one knew what Jisung’s gift was. Renjun and Donghyuck were always very upfront with their own, just like everyone else—Renjun had a disturbingly acute olfactory sense and Donghyuck had an incredible photographic memory. They didn’t have any problem flexing their gifts either.

Renjun was able to tell what was on the menu every single meal without ever peeking into the academy kitchen. Sometimes he could even tell the colors of the foods just from his sense of smell alone.

“Today,” said Renjun, picking up his paper tray from the tray dispenser, “we have porridge, hot cocoa with too much salt, and overcooked pancakes that have a bit of a circular burn on their bellies due to how the chef forgot to take them off the griddle fast enough.”

“Gee,” said Donghyuck, yawning as he grabbed a tray for himself too and passed one to Chenle. “The chef . . . Jaehee, right? Long brown hair, mole on her chin, serial collector of striped argyle socks?”

“That’s the one,” said Renjun as they moved down the breakfast hall line.

“Showoffs,” said Chenle, sandwiched between the two.

Once they grabbed their stuff and sat down to eat, Chenle couldn’t help but notice that Jisung was seated only a few tables away.

“Will you stop?”

Chenle jolted. Donghyuck was frowning at him over his bowl of porridge. “Stop what?”

“Stop staring at him.” He pointed his fork in Jisung’s direction.

“Huh—? Hey, no, I wasn’t doing any staring,” said Chenle. “It’s just Jisung. I’ve told you about him before.”

“Yep, we know,” Renjun said from across the table where he was chomping on his waffle which had far too much butter on it. Chenle feared for Renjun’s blood sugar. “Park Jisung, resident goody two-shoes. You know, Hyuck, I was unsure at first, but it’s been at least several weeks of Chenle’s incoherent simping and I’m pretty sure Chenle is obsessed with him.”

Donghyuck looked interested. “ _Is_ he?”

“He isn’t,” Chenle retorted, feeling his face growing hot. He hadn’t realized that Renjun had been noticing where his gaze kept straying. He picked up a strawberry and bit into it. “I mean, I’m not. I’m just, like—there’s just something about Jisung that bothers me. Like, whenever I try to talk to him in class or during dragon practice he always looks at me like I’m some sort of ugly toad.”

Donghyuck raised his cup of cocoa. “As he should!”

“What? No! What did I ever do to offend him? Except, like, tell him that I’m going to claim what he thinks is his spot on the dragon riding team?”

“I think you answered your own question there,” said Renjun.

“I was just stating facts. I thought it was courteous to tell him straight-up instead of, like, being all shifty about it. Obviously I’m going to be the one to get on the team,” insisted Chenle.

“Why can’t you both get on the team?”

“It doesn’t work that way, Donghyuck.”

“Why the hell not?”

Chenle cast another look over at the boy in question. Jisung was currently eating a bowl of cereal. Unsweetened cereal, and no milk. Which was one hundred percent unacceptable, of course, but Chenle had come to observe that Jisung did a lot of unacceptable things: like tucking his pants into his socks, or reminding the teachers to collect the homework assignments, or religiously washing his shoelaces every month. Who even washed their shoelaces?

“I’m telling you, both of you are gonna get onto the team,” said Donghyuck, his mouth full of porridge.

“Nah. Not gonna happen.”

  
  


Four months later, Chenle gaped at the team roster pinned to the bulletin board in the school lobby. He turned and seized Renjun by the shoulders of his fluffy January jacket. “We—me—Park also—both—”

“Yes,” said Renjun, shrugging him off. “You two can become good pals, mm? Hanging out together every day for riding practice, and all. Sounds exciting. Hey, no, don’t grimace like that. I know you’re gonna love having all that extra bonding time with him. You and your. . . .” Renjun fluttered his fingers suggestively in a way that Chenle did not like at all. “You know.”

Chenle groaned and turned away. This was going to be a disaster.

  
  


On the first, cloudy, cold day of practice, Victory accidentally (read: purposefully) smashed Jisung’s helmet after Muffin made the mistake of bumping into her, mid-flight, when Chenle had been about to score. Of course, Jisung sustained no injuries, the helmet being securely dragon-proof, yet Chenle didn’t miss the dirty look he shot at him.

The next day, during drills, Muffin easily swooped upside-down through the prearranged obstacle course, Jisung clinging to her back without much effort. To Chenle’s left, one of the upperclassmen, Jungwoo, whistled. Chenle wasn’t so easily impressed. He didn’t get how Jisung was so good at upside-down flight—did gravity have no effect on him???

When it was Chenle’s turn to do the drill he slipped off Victory’s back entirely. Once he’d regained his spot in the saddle he resolutely ignored Jisung, regardless of if the boy had noticed his mistake or not, and by that time next week Chenle had practiced that drill enough to master it.

“You two got beef?” asked Jaehyun one afternoon in the locker rooms after practice, as they pulled off their sweaty leather uniforms.

“Me and Park?” said Chenle, then shook his head when Jaehyun nodded. “No.”

Jaehyun bundled up his red riding scarf and tossed it into his locker. “Okay, well, you two have something going on for sure. It’s barely been a month of practice but everyone’s noticed the way you study each other.”

“What? Study each other? It’s not like that.”

“But it is,” said Dongyoung, on his other side, grunting as he unstrapped his heavy black riding boots. “Coach seems to like it. Said they think it’s healthy that you challenge each other.”

“Mm.”

That very day, Chenle and Jisung had been paired up for one one-on-one speed volleys, batting the ball back and forth, back and forth, until one of them would miss it and demand to play again. It had lasted thirty minutes. The other pairs had wrapped up their volleys in half that time.

It didn’t mean anything, though. Chenle and Jisung were just competitive, that’s all. They barely spoke to each other apart from the bare necessities; there was nothing to it.

When Chenle told Dongyoung this, the older said, “Yeah, okay.” He didn’t miss the glance Dongyoung shared with Jaehyun over the top of his head. He decided to let it slide.

  
  


In the end the coach decided Chenle would take up the position of center defender, and Jisung would be striker. For some reason, this made Chenle sulk. Strikers got to do all the fun stuff—Chenle didn’t want to be stuck in the background, reduced to a glorified meat shield.

“Defenders are important,” insisted the coach. “ Zhong, don’t take your role lightly. Our school has historically been weak on D. I think you’ll be the game-changer, especially for the quadrennial archipelago-wide tournament. That’s only in 3 years, you know.”

“I know,” mumbled Chenle. “I’ll do well, coach.”

Unexpectedly, Jisung approached him later, quiet and awkward as ever.

“Uh—Zhong. Hey.”

“Yeah?” said Chenle, taking off his riding gloves. “You didn’t come here to gloat, did you?”

“Gloat? Me? Never,” said Jisung. 

Chenle played along. “Oh, yes. I’m sure you wanted the defense position so badly. Watch out, Park, your jealousy is showing.”

Jisung shifted atop Muffin’s back. “You know, actually, I wanted to say I think the coach made a good decision with putting you on defense. You’re intuitive when it comes to thinking ahead. Reading the field, gauging people’s next moves. You’ll make a good center back.”

Chenle blinked at the unexpectedness and turned to squint at him. “Oh,” he said slowly. “That’s . . . thank you.”

Jisung nodded, then paused. “But, well, if you were up against a forward like me, you wouldn’t stand a chance so don’t get too cocky. I’m just saying that in the case of you being up against a less skilled forward than I, you _might_ be acceptable at blocking their shots.”

And they were back to normal. Chenle knew it was too good to be true. He rolled his eyes and waved Jisung away, assuring him that it was too bad they were on the same team because boy would he love to beat Jisung’s ass in a game any day, and Jisung just snorted and spurred Muffin away back to the stables. Archnemesis indeed. Only time could tell where this little dynamic would go.

_Dear Mom and Dad and all my sisters and cousins,_

_Hey everyone. I got on the dragon riding team! Coach is playing me as starter for center defense. Our first game was last Tuesday and since then we’ve had two or three other games all leading up to this year’s June tournament._

_We completely crushed the rival schools every round, of course. It’s a lot of fun. The other center D is named Shotaro, and he’s nice, I guess. We like to fool around and do tricks with our dragons once we know that we’ve got the game in the bag. Yes, yes, I know, irresponsible, blah blah. Really though, I think our team is pretty unbeatable as it is. We’ve got a great goalie and_ ~~_this one really talented forward_~~ _a lot of talented forwards. It’s sick!_

_Anyway yeah. Life is good. I’ll write you guys again sometime soon but I gotta go right now because Victory wants me to go file her claws, hh._

_xoxo,_

_Lele_

###  
  


If there was one thing Chenle and Jisung came to agree on, it was that the saga about the tragedy of a freshman’s life never ended. They couldn’t take literally any the electives they liked because they needed to get their graduation credits done and out of the way first; this meant that as a blanket rule, all freshmen were forced to waste months upon months taking a series of core classes based around topics like Dragon’s Ed, Home Ec, Beginner’s Flight, and another synonyms for mundanity. What a drag.

Every Thursday he slogged his way to the campus kiddie field (a smaller, condensed version of a real field for draconic sports) to play games with the other students, most of whom were . . . inexperienced, to say the least.

Right now he was tapping his foot, slumped on Victory’s back with his chin propped in his palm as he watched his classmate Aeri once again fumble the ball. This was foul. In both senses of the word. He let out a sigh and shifted in the saddle, trying to get comfortable. From across the field, he could see Park, who didn’t look any more excited than he was.

Aeri threw the ball backward across the field to her friend, Minjeong, who missed it. The ball sailed right over to Chenle. He caught it absently and was about to throw it back to Minjeong before he stopped.

Victory perked up, sensing something was about to happen.

Chenle met Jisung’s eyes across the court.

Even if he could never be a forward in a real game, there was no reason why he couldn’t mess around during a game like this, right?

He nudged his heel into Victory’s side, and the dragon took off like a bullet, speeding past a yelping Minjeong and weaving her way right over to the enemy goalposts.

One of the players made an attempt to intercept him. There was another one, closing in on his left flank. Instead of mowing his way through them like a brute, Chenle pulled on the reins at just the right angle to tell Victory he wanted up. And then they were ascending, Victory pulling into such a hard upward curve that the defenders stood no chance at blocking Chenle now.

Jisung was gliding underneath him, ready to intercept, but Chenle paid him no attention and instead looked at the goalposts. One of the rules of all the professional dragon games was that rushing the goalie was allowed and encouraged. Abrupt vertical-horizontal transitions were the best way to accomplish this. And since there were no defenders anywhere near the hoops, Chenle was pretty much set to go.

He pulled Victory into a sleek dive, the sleekest dive he ever did see, so much so that he was practically perpendicular to the ground. The keeper, a kid with long black pigtails, attempted to scramble away from the trajectory of Chenle’s rapid descent. Chenle smirked, and, in his head, counted the number of heartbeats from Victory’s heart pounding against her ribcage.  _ Three. Two. One. _

Ahh, the open 100-point goalpost was his for the taking—

A brown dragon darted into his way, wings flaring up and wide to protect the largest and most vulnerable clusters of the hoops. Victory screeched to a halt, but not before Chenle had already lobbed the ball straight at Jisung’s head.

He expected him to duck, the way most defenders did in the instance of a headshot. Instead, in the breadth of a single heartbeat, Jisung’s arms shot up and he snatched the ball  _ out of the air _ , hugging it to his chest to reduce the impact while Muffin flared her wings even wider to avoid getting propelled backward into the hoop entirely.

All of the other kids on the field gasped. After a moment, Jisung exhaled and uncurled from his fetal position, grip loosening on the ball. He met Chenle’s eyes.

_ Nice _ . Chenle grinned.

Jisung did not grin back. He steered over to the poor keeper who was positively shaking in their boots from all the stress of the play that’d just happened. “You okay, Soojin?” he asked gently.

“Zhong Chenle!” yelled the coach.

Breathless, Chenle reined Victory in and guided her back to the ground, despite her heavy protests. She was upset at not getting the ball in the goal. Chenle was just upset that Jisung didn’t acknowledge how cool his vertical-horizontal maneuver had been. Maybe the professor would be more supportive?

“You  _ imbecile _ . How dare you pull such an unnecessary stunt? Jisung and Soojin  _ both _ could’ve gotten hurt!”

Chenle’s grin fell.

“Listen, it’s not my fault, professor,” he began immediately as soon as he had demounted. The teacher glowered. “It’s not! It’s because of Park—”

“Two weeks of detention. The maneuver you did was too advanced for your age group,” the professor snapped.

“Two weeks of—the maneuver I did was perfectly legal!”

“We were having a simple and lighthearted  _ practice _ . You stepped out of line the moment you started playing rough.”

Chenle groaned. “Rough? Please, prof, listen. Park was perfectly capable of defending himself. I wouldn’t have gone hard on anyone except him. Did you forget that I’m on the school riding team? You can’t blame me for wanting to spice things up a little. And besides, Soojin’s fine. They’re fine! Right?” Chenle looked over at where the pigtailed student had dismounted and was taking refuge with their friends. Soojin looked close to tears. Chenle winced.

Jisung jumped off Muffin’s back. “I’m on the school riding team too, but  _ I _ didn’t feel the need to disrupt class like a gratuitous zealot. This is on you, Zhong.”

Chenle turned to give him a look. “Oh, please. You’ve done that maneuver yourself plenty of times in our real team practices. Besides, you  _ reacted _ . You could’ve just let me score—but instead you took the bait.”

Jisung took off his helmet, revealing sweaty black hair. “Hey, you were the one who threw the ball at my head—”

“You could’ve ducked. I know you could’ve! If anything, by indulging me, you were just as zealous as I was!” Chenle whirled toward the professor and clasped his hands together in front of his chest. “Prof, if you have to give me detention, it’s only fair that Park gets it too.”

The professor’s brow furrowed. The whole class waited with bated breaths to hear the verdict.

“Fine,” they finally said. “Fine. Both of you get two weeks of detention. And I’m knocking both your sportsmanship grades down by a letter.”

“Professor!” said Jisung, aghast.

They looked him in the eye. “ _ And _ ,” they said, “I’m going to have to suspend you from the next three practices of your school riding team. No arguments!” they said at Jisung’s facial expressions. “Go think about your actions. Class is dismissed. Soojin, come with me and we’ll get you to the infirmary wing, okay, dear?”

Chenle grumbled.

The class reluctantly dispersed, students murmuring as they slowly began to unsaddle their dragons and lead them back to the stables. Jisung let out an all-suffering groan of utter frustration and turned to Chenle with a furious look. Chenle plastered a benign smile on his face and thought,  _ oh, no _ .

“I can’t  _ believe _ you,” said Jisung stoutly.

He raised his hands in a placating gesture. “I know! I know. Detention sucks. It’s okay—it’ll be over before you know it.”

“Now I have a B in sportsmanship for this class,” hissed the other. “Do you know what that means, Zhong? It means I’m slated to get a B in this class as a whole. That’s how much the sportsmanship category is weighted.”

“Hey, a B isn’t that bad—”

A scoff. “Of course you would say that. You probably already have a C in this class, don’t you? You wouldn’t understand.”

Chenle had a D, actually. “I’m sorry. Look, I’ll find a way to make it up to you, yeah? Tell me what I can do. Consider it a freebie favor.”

He thought that would do the trick, but it only seemed to make it worse.

“Fucking excuse me? Do you think your favors are worth anything to me?” said Jisung. “Because they’re not. Now that I think about it, me pulling that stunt back there wasn’t worth it. Beating you isn’t worth it.  _ None _ of you is worth it. Not everything is about you, Zhong. Literally sometimes you’re just so full of yourself.”

Chenle stared at him, his heart sinking.

“Tone it down with the insults, Park, will you?” he eventually managed to say.

“Wasn’t insulting you. Just describing you.”

Chenle looked away to hide the way he kind of wanted to cry. He busied himself unstrapping Victory’s saddle from her frame.

“Whatever, Zhong,” he heard Jisung mutter from behind him. “Bye.”

Silently Chenle pressed his forehead against his dragon’s shoulder. He felt hot and hurt all over. Eventually it boiled, growing, growing, until he couldn’t hold it in anymore and he whirled around to shout at Jisung’s receding back:

“Next time I see you, remind me not to talk to you!”

Jisung showed no sign that he’d heard him.

Chenle climbed onto Victory’s back and urged them away into the sky. For once, the dragon obeyed readily, despite her saddle only being half-fixed. Maybe they both wanted to get away. Maybe they both wanted to just fly, fly, fly, up into the sky, where they were alone, and free, and where there were no rude, pretty boys to call them names. 

###

Detention was boring.

In it, Chenle sat by the window and drafted letters to his family, only to crumple them up and shove them into his satchel. Jisung was in the other corner of the room. The supervisor was at the front of the room. All three of them were resolutely ignoring each other.

At another failed draft with too many spelling errors, Chenle gave up and began to use it to fold a paper airplane. His hand wavered when the thought crossed his mind that he could use the airplane to send Park a message. He didn’t know what he should write.  _ Sorry _ , maybe. Or  _ fuck you _ .

In the end he crumpled the airplane up too. And it went into his bag with the rest of the papers.

###

On the last day of detention Chenle came into the room with a pack of lychee jellies. He stood next to Jisung, who looked at him.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” said Jisung. “Zhong.”

“Can I sit here?” asked Chenle, pointing to the seat next to him.

Jisung was quiet. Chenle counted the heartbeats in his chest.

Twenty-two of them passed before Jisung finally gave a nod. Chenle sank into the chair and ripped open the pack of jellies.

“I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” said Jisung right away.

They sat in silence. It was awkward. The clock ticked.

“Will you let me know why a B in Beginner’s Flight means so much to you?” asked Chenle, trying to sound genuine. He  _ was _ genuine. It was just that he rarely acted like this with Jisung, and misinterpretations happened when rarities happened. It was the way it worked.

It looked like Jisung wasn’t going to say anything, until he cleared his throat and began.

“It’s just that if my GPA drops too low, I’ll lose my scholarship,” he in a quiet voice. “The whole reason why I came here was for dragon riding. For Muffin. My home . . . we don’t have the funds to keep Muffin around—we don’t have stables or the budget to keep her well-fed and happy all the time. But here at school, all of that is provided.”

Chenle thought about this. “So if you lose the scholarship, they’ll make you go back home?”

“Yes. That’s the way it works.”

“And then what will happen to Muffin? If you can’t take care of her at your house?”

Jisung’s eyes looked heavy. “Well . . . you know what a dragon rescue is, right?” 

“Yeah,” said Chenle.

He’d heard they were incredibly underfunded, unsanitary, and unpleasant. 

“Yeah. That. That’s what’ll happen to her.”

“Oh,” said Chenle.

After a few long moments, he slid his pack of lychee jellies over the desk to Jisung. The boy looked at them, then at him.

“Truce?” said Chenle.

Jisung hesitated, but only for a second, and then he grabbed a handful of the jellies. “Truce,” he said through a full mouth. “But only because these taste good.”

That day, Chenle left the detention room for once not feeling like the weight of the sky was sitting on his shoulders. Rather, it was as if he was sharing the weight with Jisung. Now that he knew what he was going through, things made sense. It didn’t mean everything was all right again—and it definitely didn’t mean they had forgiven each other—but at least now, things were a little better. He didn’t have to be archenemies with Jisung all the time, did he? No. Some of the time would do. As for the rest . . . well, they could just be acquaintances, right?

After all, this was only freshman year. There was so much more to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ch.2 will be out tomorrow!!!


	2. sophomore year

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw // mentions of blood halfway thru this chapter. it's just hypothetical blood tho cuz they’re talking abt vampires. my secret santa, ace, likes vampires >_< that may or may not b the reason why i wrote them in there~~~

By sophomore year, Chenle felt as if he had evolved into his true form. None of this ratty freshman stuff. As a sophomore, he sported a pair of earrings, which he was very proud of, and also he had grown a few inches taller, which he was _immensely_ proud of. If he tilted his chin the right way then he could almost see the outline of a mustache growing on his upper lip.

Unfortunately, his self-satisfaction plummeted when he lay eyes on Jisung. Jisung had grown impossibly lankier during the summer they hadn’t seen each other; his hair was neat, and short, and _pink_. Pink-brown, to be exact. And he had filled out a little; he was less bony, that was for sure. Not that he was buff or anything. At least, not more buff than Chenle. 

“Lele,” said Donghyuck once Chenle had arrived on campus and met up with him and Renjun for some post-summer sodas. They settled down at a lacquer table, suitcases propped next to them, with their dragons snoozing in the background. “There’s something you should know.”

“What is it?”

“Nothing bad,” offered Renjun quickly. “It’s—well, you’ll see.”

Donghyuck waited until Chenle was done slurping up his soda. “Have you checked the roommate roster for this year?”

He hadn’t. “Oh no,” he said. “Don’t tell me.” Ugh, he should’ve known that last year’s good luck that got him a solo room wouldn’t last.

Renjun nodded sagely. “You’ve got a roommate.”

Chenle grabbed Renjun’s soda and took a big consolation sip. “It’s okay,” he said dramatically as he set the can down again. “Just a part of the boarding school aesthetic. I’ll survive. Maybe my roommate will be someone cool and they’ll like the same music as me!”

“No one would like your punk screamo,” said Renjun with distaste.

“ _Excuse_ you. You’re just jealous of my Dreamcatcher photocard collection,” Chenle said.

For the rest of the day they lounged around, ordering more sodas. Hyuck and Chenle got into a burping competition, which made Renjun pinch his sensitive nose shut to avoid being overwhelmed by all the smelly carbonated air. It was a good time, and they were fooling around like always—Chenle had missed them over the summer.

Little did he know the horror that awaited him when he finally gathered his bags and went to his new dorm room.

“No,” said Chenle in disbelief, a suitcase under each arm as he stood frozen in the doorway.

A pink-haired head turned to glance at him. Familiar almond eyes widened in alarm.

“What are _you_ doing here?” demanded both boys at the same time.

Jisung got to his feet, putting his pencil down onto the desk. He crossed his arms. “Think you’ve got the wrong room number, Zhong.”

Chenle’s gaze flickered around to the walls of the room that were already decorated in Jisung’s posters, the twin bed of his that had already been outfitted with a red pinstriped bedsheet set, and the ajar closet that indicated Jisung had already unpacked all his clothes.

“Yeah, I think so too,” muttered Chenle, seizing his bulky bags and turning around, forcing his way down the hall. He was supposed to be in dorm 704, northwest wing. He’d probably accidentally gone to the northeast wing or something. Or maybe this was the wrong floor.

Ten minutes later, Chenle stormed back to room 704 and slammed the door open, startling Jisung out of his chair once more.

“Park. Check your rooming info sheet,” he ordered, breathing hard from having quite literally run all around campus trying to find an alternative to the situation at hand. 

Jisung grabbed his sheet off the desk and squinted down at it. “This is definitely where I was assigned,” he said slowly.

That settled it. Chenle set his suitcases down on his side of the room, none too gently. “Great,” he muttered. “Well. Hello there, roomie.”

Jisung sputtered. Chenle plopped himself down on the floor and began unpacking his things. Fuck the academy. Fuck the master schedule. If only a room transfer was possible . . . ugh, Chenle would never hear the end of this from their teammates, who already seemed to have a serial fixation for shipping anything with legs.

“Ground rules,” he eventually said, still not turning around. “Number one is we each keep our things on our side of the room.”

“Done,” said Jisung sharply.

“Number two. If you want to invite friends over, warn me ahead of time.”

“Why would I invite friends to my bedroom?” Jisung sounded genuinely curious.

“Uh?? Because that’s what people do? To hang out and stuff? Okay whatever. Rule number three is—”

“I should be able to set some of these rules too,” said Jisung. “And I say that rule number three should be no loud music while we’re studying.”

Chenle gave a wry grin. “Not a problem.” He barely ever studied.

They went back and forth, negotiating boundaries, setting up conditions. When all was said and done, they had seemed to reach a good middle ground.

“Park?”

“What.”

“You’re not studying right now, are you?”

“I’m not,” said Jisung slowly.

Chenle sat up on his bed, his box of his photocard collection in his lap. Jisung eyed him, half-suspiciously, half-curiously.

“Do you like Dreamcatcher?” Chenle said.

###

“So,” snickered Renjun, nudging Chenle’s side the next day. “How’s the roomie?”

“Stop,” said Chenle, shoving him back. “You guys knew about this, didn’t you? That’s why you were rubbing it in that first day of school.”

“Well?” prompted Donghyuck.

“Well what?”

“Is it as bad as you thought it would be?”

“Yes,” snapped Chenle, not wanting to give them any satisfaction.

Renjun and Donghyuck offered twin grins. Chenle strode away from them as fast as possible, but they just hooted and scurried up to his side once more.

_Dear Mom and Dad and whoever else reads these letters,_

_Guess what? Victory ate the principal’s favorite pet cow hahahahahahaha. Ha. No but I managed to sweet talk my way out of getting punished, so don’t worry <3 there’s no lawsuits coming your way. _

_xx, Lele_

###

“Aye! Head’s up!”  
Chenle twisted just in time to see the ball whizzing toward him. Immediately he pushed his left heel into Victory’s flank and the dragon responded accordingly, rearing up onto her belly so Chenle was at a good angle to catch the ball in the crook of his elbow and hurl it back across the field. Zoa caught it and began to streak toward the goal hoops.

Today was just an ordinary practice. Sunny, a little breezy. The coach had recruited a student named Jaemin to stand on the cusp of the byline and manipulate the air currents to give the players a bit of a run for their money—Jaemin had a gift for being able to control the weather. 

Zoa shot her shot. The keeper, Sooyoung, blocked it. Soon enough the ball was back on Chenle’s side of the field, passing from midfielder to striker, and finally to Yuta. At the coach’s command, Jaemin doubled the strength of the air currents, forcing Yuta to hunch down close to his dragon in order not to get blown off.

Chenle met Shotaro’s eyes from just over the crest of Victory’s horns. In the span of a split-second a silent negotiation occurred.

Then it was decided. “Mine,” Chenle shouted, claiming it just in time, as he swerved and captured Yuta’s overhanded throw in the fourth fold of Victory’s wing. He lobbed it back to offense, then sat back into the saddle.

“Nice,” called Shotaro. 

“Yeah. Do you think I underdid the topspin? Coach said I needed to bump it up a little.”

“I think you did fine,” piped up their keeper, Seulgi. “If anything, I think Vic’s just being lazy today.”

Victory nickered in disagreement. Seulgi’s dragon, Lula, snorted.

During water break, Jisung sat himself down on the bench seat next to Chenle. Chenle didn’t spare him a glance, too busy chugging his water bottle.

“I noticed there’s some discourse amongst the dragons today,” said Jisung. “Care to explain? Victory’s taking the brunt of it.”

Chenle laughed. “What? More draconian gossip?”

From time to time Jisung would bring it up, when he and Chenle were in their dorm at night, both of them too bored to go to sleep. Jisung would tell him all about the fascinating team dynamics of the dragons that went on behind the scenes. Apparently Rapunzel, Yuta’s dragon, had a bit of a grudge against Leo, Yangyang’s dragon, because Leo had a bad habit of hogging the water trough. Then there was the whole sisterhood / borderline coven between Sooyoung’s Haneur, Heejin’s Nori, and Jungeun’s Janggun, the proverbial holy trinity of the midfielders. Jisung would excitedly tell Chenle all about the way the dragons bickered, shared inside jokes, and bullied each other. Chenle hoped the bullying was a playful type of bullying. Or at least, that it wasn’t sincerely malicious.

 _It’s not,_ Jisung assured him one evening, when they were chomping on chips. Jisung’s arm was elbow-deep in the Pringles container, and Chenle had crumbs all over his bedsheets. _They’re not malicious. Rather, it’s just kind of funny. And sweet. Like the way you and I_ —

He had fallen silent. Chenle had raised an eyebrow. _Like what, Park?_ he asked. Jisung had stuffed his face with more Pringles so as to have an excuse not to respond.

Presently the wind tousled Jisung’s fluffy hair as he turned on the bench to face Chenle. “You won’t believe it. Everyone’s saying Victory’s a little full of herself. Even the coach’s dragon thinks that Victory needs to learn some manners.”

“Manners?” Chenle shot a look over at where his dragon could be seen happily resting in the grass, her eyes shut as she soaked in the warmth of the sun.

He frowned.

Okay, sure, Victory _wasn’t_ well-behaved. She was boisterous and impulsive and she liked to disobey Chenle, purposefully ignoring his signals so that she could exercise some more control over the flow of the game. Then there was Muffin, Jisung’s ride, who had none of those problems. Muffin was sweet and would do anything for Jisung to pet her behind the ears right where she liked it. Also she sneezed a lot, in a cute way. She was like a baby kitten. Victory was . . . well, Victory was like an unspayed cougar.

“I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,” said Jisung, who had seemed to notice Chenle’s furrowed brow. “She’s just in the equivalent of her ugly duckling stage.” 

Chenle looked back over at him. “Who are you calling an ugly duckling?” he said. “Your dragon is the one looking like an overcooked scone.”

Jisung gasped and stood up, the sun glinting off the metal buttons of his riding jacket. “You take that back!”

“Make me,” said Chenle.

“My Muffin’s scales are _amber_. Not overcooked. You wouldn’t know beauty if it slapped you in the face, Zhong.”

“Slap me then,” said Chenle easily.

After a moment he realized what he’d just said. Jisung was staring at him like he’d just grown another nostril.

“You—”

“Okay, that’s time!” shouted the coach, clapping their hands to call the scattered players back to the field. “Break’s over! Let’s get back to it. Saddle up.”

Chenle turned away quickly, walking as fast as he could over to Victory. He would never talk about this again, he vowed to himself. He would terminate Park if he brought it up to anyone. He would absolutely terminate him. 

###

Winter was approaching fast, and with it came the inevitable hype about the upcoming Yule Ball. The Yule Ball was pretty much the academy’s version of winter formal, except sort of copyrighted from the mythical world of Harry Potter, because why not. Only the school’s juniors could attend. Renjun and Donghyuck were noticeably conscious of it.

It started like this. On a Sunday afternoon in November, the three boys were lazing around in the commons area, having given up the game of chess that they’d gotten halfway through. Donghyuck had his feet kicked up on his velvet couch’s armrest as he toyed with the enchanted self-scrambling Rubik’s Cube between his palms. “Ugh, ballroom classes are going to start soon,” he murmured.

Chenle laughed and looked up from his phone. “You’re taking ballroom?”

“Yeah. We all have to. Yule stuff,” said Renjun.

“I can’t believe we literally lose marks if we don’t attend,” groused Donghyuck. “What is this? A dictatorship? What if we have better things to do with our time than prance around in stinky suits at a stinky party?”

Renjun nudged Chenle. “He’s just saying that because he asked his crush to be his date and he got rejected.

Donghyuck sat up so fast that the floating Rubik’s Cube fell to the ground. “Hey!” he said. “Look, okay, I didn’t stand a chance to begin with! Yukhei’s a senior. And I don’t think he’s into boys. It’s whatever. I knew from the beginning not to get my hopes up.”

“That somehow makes it even sadder,” said Chenle pityingly.

Mumbling, Donghyuck flopped back onto the couch, fiddling with the toy again. Renjun and Chenle emitted twin noises of both amusement and sympathy.

  
  


As the days went by, and December drew near, the topic of the Yule Ball became more and more rampantly discussed. On leisurely lunchtime flights on their dragons, Donghyuck and Renjun routinely griped about the mandatory ballroom dance classes, while Chenle chomped on his grilled cheese sandwiches and tossed bits of beef jerky to Victory as well as his friends’ dragons, Chocoball and Moomin, respectively.

The first Yule proposal happened six days before the ball; a girl got on her knee in front of another, then held up a bouquet of flowers and sweetly asked if she could make her the happiest girl in the world and go to her to the ball. After that Yule proposals started happening left and right, in a variety of fashions, each more bizarre than the next. Pizza boxes with messages scrawled on the inside covers. A choir of pixies, hired for a serenade atop dragonback. Cut-out stencils of memes, pasted together to form a single word that functioned as a impressively cohesive sentence: _Yule?_

“Guys,” said Renjun one day, plopping breathlessly down at the dinner table. “I’m desperate. Ningning said no to me. Said she’s going with Karina. And Yerim said she’s going with Chanhyuk!”

“Why’d you ask Ningning and Yerim?” said Donghyuck with the correct amount of judgemental skepticism.

“Because they’re my friends and I thought they’d take pity on me,” moaned Renjun, burying his face in his hands, then immediately wrinkling his nose and pulling away. “Ew, my fingers smell like salsa.”

“This is ridiculous,” Chenle muttered.

“Agreed,” said Donghyuck. “Ren, let’s just go together. As bro pals. Hmm?”

Renjun looked at him suspiciously. “Where’s the catch?”

“No catch!” said Donghyuck. Then he winked. “ _You’re_ a catch.”

Chenle gagged. Renjun slapped Donghyuck with his napkin and the other giggled, trying to defend himself. In the end, Renjun agreed to go with him, and Chenle was left smiling outwardly yet secretly bracing himself for the worst. After all, he’d known for a while that Donghyuck had a bit of a crush on Renjun, and if Renjun wasn’t at least marginally aware of this then he would be soon. And soon enough they’d be stuffing their tongues down each others’ throats and Chenle would be here with permanently scarred corneas.

###

That year’s Yule Ball came and went.

The night of the ball, Chenle blasted his rock music loud in his room to mask the overwhelming and nauseating sound of the magical cellos tuning themselves downstairs. He took out the dragon-themed chess set that his parents had sent him for Christmas, and he and Jisung sat down on the dorm floor half with the intention to play and half to just bicker over the board and laugh at the anatomical incorrectness of the dragon-shaped chess figurines. And if it was like this then Chenle thought he didn’t really need a Yule Ball. He didn’t need one at all.

###

_Dear Kun ge (AND ONLY KUN GE!!!!!!!!!),_

_So, I know you’re like, 22 and so you’re pretty much bald by now but I think you may have a larger brain cell count than me so I came to you, my trusty older brother, for a bit of advice. Hope that’s okay._

_So . . . um, there’s this guy. He’s decent, I guess. (He’s also sometimes a bit of a bitch, but we’re not going to go there, there’s bigger fish to fry.) He doesn’t seem to have a gift . . . ! As in, a magical one. And if he does, he hasn’t told me. We hang out a lot (I guess??) but I haven’t picked up literally any clues except for that he says he can speak to dragons but he’s insisted multiple times that that’s not his gift._

_Suspicious, right? I want to get answers but I’m not sure how to go about doing it. Can you help me?_

_\- signed, Chenle_

  
  
  


_dear Lele,_

_What do you gain from knowing what his gift is? He definitely has one_ — _they won’t let you into the academy if you don’t_ — _but again, it probably isn’t anything special if he’s not proud enough about it to want to show it off. Think: maybe he’s got, like, a special power for being able to poop on command. Or maybe he’s got the power to look into your soul and see all of your worst fears or dirty search history. Who knows?_

_Also I’m not bald. You kids think anyone over 18 is ancient smh._

_love, Kun ge_

###

“Can you read minds?”

Jisung glanced up from his textbook suspiciously. Chenle refused to look back, too busy rearranging his mirror collection.

Jisung spun his swivel chair around so he was facing him. Ugh, his legs looked especially long in the small chair. His gaze landed appraisingly on the stack of handheld mirrors on Chenle’s bedside, then at the way Chenle was trying to set up a floor-length mirror in the small space between the closet and the door.

“Wow. You . . . uh, sure do care a lot about the way you look, huh?”

“What are you talking about?” Chenle wiped the sweat off his brow. “Answer the question.”

“Answer mine first,” said Jisung. “Just—? Why do you have so many of those things?”

He had to be pulling his leg. There was no way he didn’t know about his gift by now; Chenle was pretty sure everyone in this school knew everyone else’s gifts, unless they were shady and secretive like Park. Also, they’d been literally _rooming_ together for half the year by now. 

“That’s really none of your business,” he said, mimicking the way Jisung had spoken to him the first time they’d met.

Jisung blinked in recognition at the memory.

Chenle turned away and tried to smear away a bit of dust on the corner of the mirror frame. _Park Jisung you’re a Chad,_ he thought internally, five times in a row, and when he was done he snuck a peek over at Jisung, but the other showed no outward reaction, and so in the end Chenle decided that either Jisung didn’t know what a Chad was or he just couldn’t read minds. Probably both. Both was good.

###

As the three of them started to walk down the hall to get to their next class, Chenle slung his arms over Donghyuck and Renjun’s shoulders, causing them to buckle. He ignored their complaints. “So! Do you think you guys can swing by and visit me in training today? We’re learning upside-down maneuvers.”

Renjun shook his head. “Sorry, can’t. Busy.”

“Homework again?” Chenle said. “Maybe you ought to transfer out History of Heroes, if you’re just staring at textbooks night after night.”

“Textbooks aren’t what he’s staring at,” Donghyuck said, sounding a bit bitter.

Renjun batted him. “Hyuck!”

“What? It’s true! Everyone knows how much you like to ogle that one hottie on the dance team! You’re always talking about how you wish you had the confidence to tell them you like them,” said Donghyuck. “You’re a wimp. You need to fess up and tell them how you feel or else you’ll never get any action.”

“Easy for you to say,” Renjun shot back. “You’ve probably never even hesitated to tell any of your crushes that you like them. You don’t know what it’s like.”

Donghyuck faltered, then shoved his hands in his pocket and looked away.

“What’s what like?” asked Chenle, trying to diffuse the tension.

Renjun nodded indulgently. “Well. My pupils, I’ll explain. Your hands get all trembly, and your neck gets hot, and you start smiling at stuff that aren’t typically smile-worthy. And that’s called a crush. It’s lovely business.”

“I know what a crush is like,” Donghyuck retorted.

“Do you?” said Renjun. “I pity anyone unfortunate enough for _you_ to like them.”

Chenle went _ooh_ . Donghyuck went _arghhhhh_.

When Renjun was looking away, Chenle reached up and gave Donghyuck a sympathetic pat on the back. Donghyuck grimaced. Neither of them had expected Renjun to be this oblivious about Donghyuck’s feelings for him, but, well. Here they were.

  
  
  


Later, during dragon training, Chenle excused himself from the loop-de-loop lesson to go use the restroom. Instead of using the toilet, though, he just went over to stand in front of the sink mirrors, and touched the tip of his fingers to the cool glass to trigger his gift.

In no time, the mirror surface rippled like it was made of water, and Chenle climbed up on the sink to squeeze himself into the mirror frame. The cold yet vaguely pleasurable sting of his gift of teleportation was a trademark for whenever he used mirrors; he wasn’t quite skilled enough to teleport without them yet.

He teleported to the gym, where he found Renjun, sitting in the pews and pretending to work on homework. Renjun blanched when he saw him, but didn’t ask him to leave, so Chenle sat next to him and watched what Renjun was watching.

It was the athlete afterschool practice. In particular, it was one athlete with an adorable smile and sleeves rolled up to their elbows as they practiced their dance routine with their team.

“They’re cute,” whispered Chenle in Renjun’s ear.

“Jeno. They them,” said Renjun. 

“Hyuck was right. You should tap that.”

Renjun grimaced. “Jeno doesn’t even know I exist.”

“Why don’t you go up to them one day and ask them out?”

“I prefer to pine from the sidelines. Not all of us can be like you, Chenle.”

“Like me?” Chenle said. “What are you talking about?”

“Not all of us have the courage interact with our crushes on a daily basis. Although in your case I think it’s not so much courage as it is skullduggery.”

Chenle shook his head. “But I don’t even have a crush . . . ?”

Renjun patted his hand and resumed watching Jeno. Chenle decided he didn’t care enough to press. He leaned against Renjun’s side and watched the dancers rehearse.

Renjun was wrong. As far as Chenle knew, he had never had a crush, and he didn’t want to, either—not if it meant the lonely, quiet, one-sided pining that both Renjun and Donghyuck were currently working through with a threadbare hope at a fairy-tale catch-all ending where everyone gets their happily ever after. No, Chenle liked thrills and loudness and jabber and action. Like bantering with Donghyuck or fighting with Jisung or speed-flying Victory in the upcoming dragon games.

That was right; the dragon games were approaching. He needed to get in shape.

###

Chenle liked to visit the stables late at night, when everyone else was asleep and he’d finished all of his schoolwork. Usually it was around this time that his back started to ache from so much studying (read: maybe 20 minutes of studying), and he usually took it as an opportunity to release the tension with a short nighttime flight. Today he especially needed the reprieve—chemistry class had been a nightmare. He’d gotten such a bad score on the unit exam that it had thrown off the entire curve and now all of his groupmates and classmates were pissed at him.

He sighed. Clad in his winter cloak and silent black riding boots, he slipped into the stables, closing the heavy metal door behind him. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim lighting; the only light in the stables was the furnace in the corner, tended to by the 8 pm stable hand, a pretty girl with short hair named Jiyoon.

She stopped poking the embers to turn and look at him over her shoulder. Her bangs were stuck to her forehead by the perspiration from the fire. Chenle had always had a high respect for the stable hands. They were students, just like him, but they chose to take a part-time job as employees for the academy in order to earn some money to send back home to their families who were probably paying out their ass to have their kids even attend such an academy in the first place.

“Shh,” Jiyoon said, raising a grime-covered finger to her lips. “You’ll wake the babies.”

Chenle nodded, then took off his satchel and placed it in the rider cubby with his name on it. His dragon, who was curled up in her stall near the left wing of the stables, watched him with smoky blue eyes from where her chin rested on top of her long, thick tail. The firelight from the furnace made her scales gleam.

“Hey, baby,” Chenle said softly, nearing her. He unlatched the stall door and stepped inside. The dragon shook out her wings to stretch out the kinks, then lay back down for Chenle to pet her.

“Did you have a nice nap?” he asked, resting his palm on her warm snout. She blew out a huff in affirmation, and closed her eyes as he began to run his palm in that spot on her forehead that she could never scratch with her talons. He shifted around to check the condition of the rest of her scales, pursing his lips in concern when he saw that there was still a small patch of soft, baby scales near her flank. The injury had been from an accident the week before—she’d accidentally grazed herself on a spiky tree on her descent from the field, because she’d been so eager to get to the water barrels. The scales were growing back, but they were still vulnerable.

“We’ll take it easy today, hmm, Vic?” He gently patted the baby scales. 

Victory rumbled in agreement. It was both a frightening and beautiful noise, to someone who wasn’t used to it. Chenle was used to it. He thought Vic was cute.

She was a young, horned flaxflyer, her crescent, ivory horns curving inwards on her small, catlike head. Her off-white wings were webbed in gold, and when Chenle was younger, he liked to imagine that they were golden embroidery, sewn there from the heavens for the purpose of making her look like a shooting star when in flight. _Victory_. She and Chenle had grown up together. His parents had let her crawl up in his crib and nap with him there, before he was even old enough to open his eyes.

As Chenle was saddling her up to get ready for their night ride, there was a creak from the swinging metal door of the stables. He heard Jiyoon’s speak up to greet the newcomer. 

“Hey! What brings—”

“Holy shit,” said the newcomer’s voice, and then there was a scramble. “Are you—what are you—ah! Let me—” 

More rattling noises. Victory perked up at the drama. Chenle told her to stay, then slipped back outside the stall and stopped in his tracks when he saw what was happening.

Jiyoon was standing frozen, the front of her apron doused in water. Her mouth hung open. From a couple paces away, Jisung lowered the water pail, with which he had presumably doused her with. His chest heaved up and down.

“Is that better?” he panted.

“What in the world—” she began.

“Oi Park,” Chenle interrupted. Jisung startled and turned to him, eyes wide. “If that’s the piss pail you’re holding there, then you and I are going to have some words.”

No one messed with the stable hands on Chenle’s watch.

Jisung looked down at the pail in his hands, let out an _eep_ , and dropped it. It landed on his foot. Chenle gave him credit for not yelping in pain like he probably wanted to. The remaining liquid in the pain splashed out to dribble on top of Chenle’s left boot, and he looked down at it with a wrinkled nose.

“It’s not the piss pot,” Jiyoon said quickly to assuage the two of them. “That’s just the spare drinking water. But Jisung, do you want to tell me why you decided to give me an impromptu shower?”

Jisung’s eyes darted between the two of them. Uncertain. “Her—her hands. They were on fire?”

Both of them stood in stunned silence, before Jiyoon began to giggle. Still laughing, she took off her dripping apron to hang it up to dry.

“What? What is it?”

“Park, you dumbass, Jiyoon is fireproof,” Chenle sighed. “I seriously can’t with you.”

“She’s—what? Really? Oh. Wait, really?” Jisung looked on in dismay. “But when I came in, she was kneeling at the furnace, and . . . and she was elbow deep in the flames, and she had ashes on her hair, and the room smelled like—like something was burning—”

Jiyoon giggled. “I was roasting some treats for the babies when they wake up from their naps.” She held up her fists, which were full of cooked kibble, probably goat-flavored or something or other. “Chenle’s right. My gift is fireproof-ness. It’s really handy!”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” Jisung said. He reminded Chenle of a kicked puppy. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t know.”

She waved off his apologies and bustled away to go feed the hatchlings. In the meantime, Chenle cleared his throat.

“What brings you here tonight anyway?” Chenle said.

Jisung’s expression fell back into its familiar poker face as he turned to look at him. No puppy apologies for Chenle, then. 

“I’m here to fly. What else would I come here for?”

“No matter how many nights you train, you know you’ll never be at my level, right?” 

Jisung went over to start pick up the pair of spare riding boots in the corner. “Uh-huh,” he said, pulling them on.

Chenle watched him for a moment. Those were the communal boots. They should be illegal, for sanitary reasons. “Um, those probably smell awful?” 

“Um,” Jisung said, mimicking him, “not everyone has the funds to buy their own pair of fancy shoes, Zhong. Why don’t you go, like, make paper airplanes out of your chemistry notes, or something? I know that’s all you do in chem anyway.”

That particular jab hit too close today. Chenle knew Jisung didn’t mean to hurt him—they were past that—but still, sometimes the other boy could be a little bit insensitive. “So you like to observe me in chemistry class, huh?” Chenle finally managed to work up. “I’m flattered.”

“Get a brain cell,” Jisung laughed. He buckled the boots, then went over to his dragon’s stall and unlatched it, disappearing inside before Chenle could think of something to say. He did not seem like he was in a good mood tonight.

Victory had gotten bored of being ignored and was now mussing the hay of her stall with her front talons, the way a cat did cat kneading. Chenle went to go saddle her up to appease her. As he hefted the heavy leather saddle over her midsection, he momentarily forgot about Jisung, too focused on making sure the latch of the saddle didn’t chafe against Victory’s sensitive scale patch. When he was done he stepped into the stirrup and pulled himself up into the seat with a grunt.

“You’re getting tall, girl.”

Victory nosed open the door of the stall and padded out, gleefully shaking out her wings to stretch. It wasn’t like she didn’t have enough space to stretch inside the stall itself. She was just being dramatic.

“So, the doctor said we have to start with some lunges. I don’t know how dragons do lunges, but the doctor said you would understand what I mean, so. Just take it slow, and—Whoa!”

Victory had launched off the ground, wings bursting open in a flurry of loud light. Chenle felt the muscles in her midsection flexing and relaxing, flexing and relaxing, as she began to pump her wings up into the sky.

“ _Victory_ ,” he complained. 

She did a few laps around the cow field, purring at the fresh air and the fresh meat and the fresh everything, and Chenle sighed and slumped over, resting his chin on his palm.

Then, all of the sudden, she unexpectedly dived. Chenle jolted back to attention and dug his heels against her sides, yanking back on the reins, and just at the moment before the dragon was about to enclose her claws around one of the fat brown sows, Chenle jerked the reins hard enough for her to groan and rise back up again with an annoyed flick of her tail.

“You know you’re not supposed to eat the cows!”

He heard the telltale swoop of two wings coming up behind him and he cast a snide look over his shoulder, already knowing Jisung would be there to clown him.

He was right. “Get it together, Zhong,” sang the devilspawn, gliding by on his dragon Muffin, who was peaceful and calm and obedient unlike _someone_. 

Chenle let out a sigh and glanced down at Victory, who was acting as if nothing had happened. “Why do you have to embarrass me so much, girl?” he muttered. The dragon chuffed in response.

“She says you embarrass yourself plenty,” Jisung called over his shoulder as he flew away.

Ugh.

  
  


Once Chenle had managed to steer Victory up onto the sky far enough away from the cows that she was no longer tempted to eat any, he let out a long breath and kicked back into the saddle, the reins resting on the tip of his boot. Flying was always relaxing. Up here, he couldn’t hear anything except the gentle sound of silence. 

And Jisung’s dragon, of course.

“Wanna race?” asked Jisung, swooping closer.

Chenle eyed the way he and Muffin were flying upside-down, Jisung clinging to her backside. _How_ did he do that? Before Jisung could notice him staring he quickly looked away, straight ahead into the sky.

“I’m not racing. The doctor said Victory needs to take it easy.”

“Ah.” Jisung drifted closer, his hair hanging upside-down in a comical sort of way. “I hope she gets better soon.”

Chenle kept his gaze straight ahead. “Mhm.”

They flew like that for a while, side by side, without saying anything. Jisung seemed unbothered by the silence.

Chenle suddenly swiveled to look at him. “How come your face isn’t red?” he blurted.

“How come what?” 

“You’ve been upside-down for ages. Your face should be swollen and blushed by now. How come it isn’t? You look like you’re completely fine. Something’s odd about you. Are you hiding something from me?”

Jisung glanced away, and Muffin veered back upright. “I’m . . . well, it’s a long story.”

Chenle hesitated. “If you were a vampire, would you eat me?”

At that, Jisung legitimately gagged. It didn’t even seem like he was faking it. 

“Just hypothetically speaking!” Chenle insisted.

“Oh God. Okay, first of all, vampires don’t exist, Zhong. And no, do you really think I’d secretly harvest your blood in the middle of the night for diet purposes? Also—come to think of it, I didn’t know people were so interested in knowing everyone else’s gifts. Why are you so nosy?”

“Come _on_. If you had any scrap of a social life you would know that being upfront about your magic is common knowledge.”

“Well, you’re right, I don’t have much of a social life,” agreed Jisung. “Okay well my mom told me that telling other people about your gift means you think they’re special. That you trust them. Hey, that’s just what my mom taught me,” he added, when Chenle made a face. “And I hate to break it to you, Zhong, but I don’t trust you.”

“Well, why not?” said Chenle.

“Firstly, you cheat in chess,” Jisung said.

“Okay, no, it’s called a _castle_. It’s a real technique and it’s not cheating—”

“Whatever,” Jisung said. “You also literally just accused me of being a bloodsucking vampire. So obviously you don’t trust me. And trust has to go both ways, so.”

“I trust you,” said Chenle, reflexively.

“Now you’re just saying that to get me to tell you my secrets,” remarked Jisung.

“I trust you,” repeated Chenle, then tugged in his gut the imaginary string that connected him to the mirror realm. In the blink of an eye, he’d vanished into thin air.

Last week in magic class he’d learned how to do this without mirrors; any reflective surface would do, be it water or dragon scales or the lenses of eyeglasses. Here in the mirror realm, also called the in-between, everything was monochrome and cold, and Chenle could only see the real world as if through a particularly opaque veil. He could make out the blurry shapes of Victory and Muffin, still flying side-by-side, but only one of them had a rider.

“Zhong? Where did you—holy shit. Chenle? _Chenle_?”

Chenle slipped back into the human realm with a nice _pop_ , sitting perched on Victory’s back once more. “I’m fine,” he laughed. “That’s my gift. I can teleport.”

Jisung stared at him, wide-eyed. “Fucking . . . You should’ve given me a warning.”

“Were you scared?” Chenle teased, then vanished and reappeared over on Muffin’s back behind Jisung. “How’s this? Cool, huh?”

He played around a bit more, teleporting here and there in the sky so quickly that gravity couldn’t affect him, and the whole while he laughed at the way Jisung looked starstruck. Eventually once he’d gotten back on Victory, Jisung asked, “Do you think you can teleport me with you?”

Invitingly, Chenle offered his hand into the sky between the two of them.

Jisung slipped his hand in his. His yelp was cut off as Chenle swiftly used his magic to drag the other boy through the in-between and over onto Chenle’s saddle, right behind him. When Jisung came back he was spluttering. “I thought we were going to give each other warnings??”

Chenle shrugged with cheer. “Meh.”

Jisung sat there for a while, as if sifting through his thoughts, before he finally asked, “I guess you’ll want to know my power, huh?”

“I don’t know,” Chenle said, playful. “Only if you _trust_ me, that is.”

They’d been flying for a great deal of time by now, and they’d probably circled around the designated sky trail at least a dozen times. There was no one else up here in the sky with them—that was why Chenle waited, patiently, when Jisung was quiet for so long that it almost seemed as if he wouldn’t say anything at all.

“You . . . you have to promise not to laugh.”

Chenle thought about what Kun had said in his letter. “All right.”

“I think I’m going to show you now.”

“All right.”

Jisung took a deep breath, then stood up on the saddle. Chenle looked at him in alarm but Jisung just steadied himself with his hands on Chenle’s shoulders and said, “Watch, okay? I’ll only do this once. It’s kinda exhausting.”

And then he bent his knees and jumped off the dragon.

Now it was Chenle’s turn to panic. He jerked on the reins to pull Victory into a halt and stared speechlessly at where Jisung’s small figure was plummeting down to the earth.

The figure became so small it was nearly a dot. And then, slowly, it began to grow larger.

No, it wasn’t getting larger. Jisung was just rising up again. He rose higher, higher, and smiled shyly at Chenle, completely suspended in the sky with his feet resting on thin air and his arms spread out on either side of him. 

“Ta-da,” said Jisung, then promptly flew back over so he could land with a tired noise on the saddle behind Chenle once more. “Whew. I had to really psych myself up to do that, you know. You know the Bee Movie where the bee tells the lady that the reason why the bees don’t fly all the time is because flying is tiresome? Well it’s the same for me. Not that I have _any_ trust in the Bee Movie or its logistics, because, well, everyone knows it’s a load of dragon dung—”

He was talking fast the way he did when he was nervous. Something about it comforted Chenle, to know he wasn’t the only nervous one here.

The power of flight . . . it was borderline mythical. The last documented carrier had been the prime minister of England, and that had been back in the 70’s, and even then it’d been an unexpressed recessive gene.

“I didn’t know fliers still existed,” said Chenle.

Jisung fell quiet. “They don’t,” he said. “I’m . . . I’m the only one.”

“Are you part dragon?”

“No. Human. Just gifted, that’s all.”

When Chenle asked him to demonstrate again, just to make sure he hadn’t been seeing things, Jisung obliged, floating up and around so that Chenle could thoroughly look at the way gravity had no effect on him. Chenle whistled, and Jisung once again slumped behind him, this time almost limp.

“Drawbacks,” he mumbled. “Can’t fly for very long. Professors and I are working on it—sometimes I pass out when I try too hard. S’almost like narcolepsy?”

Chenle suddenly felt bad that he’d made him do it. Jisung sounded terribly sleepy. “Take a nap,” he said. “I’ll look after Muffin for now. I’ll wake you up in ten.”

“Mm, thanks,” Jisung murmured, before completely leaning forward and latching himself onto Chenle, sound asleep.

  
  
  


He could fly. Chenle couldn’t believe it. It was amazing.

Jisung could fly. 

  
  


Thirty minutes passed before he sensed Jisung stir, then heard him yawn.

“You up?” Chenle said, and Victory nickered, as if in response.

“Heartbeat,” muttered Jisung. “Fast.”

“What?”

“Your heartbeat. Your dragon says it’s fast.”

 _Victory you snake_ , Chenle thought, his face growing hot. “Why did she tell you that?”

“I don’t know,” Jisung said. He sounded like he did, though. “She didn’t need to tell me. I can feel it just fine by myself.”

Chenle swallowed. That was right. Jisung’s arms were wrapped around his waist from behind, his torso snug up against Chenle’s back—of course he could sense the racing of his pulse, the way it pounded in his mouth and his ears and his fingertips and everywhere, like a runaway hatchling. This was new. This was Jisung and Chenle, not Park and Zhong, and Chenle’s heart wasn’t used to it.

He wanted to get used to it.

He tightened his grip on Victory’s reins. “Ha ha. Ha,” he said eloquently.

Jisung took his chin off of his shoulder to peer at him from the side. He searched his face. He sounded fully awake by now. “You good?” 

“Me? Oh, yes, yes. The goodest. How do you feel?”

“Better. Power naps are always good.”

“Yep. The goodest.”

“Why are you being so weird?” Jisung said.

“I’m not being weird. You are,” Chenle said.

Jisung made a face. He was probably used to hearing better comebacks. “If it’ll help, I can scoot away—”

Chenle repressed the urge to grab Jisung’s hands and plant them securely around his middle. “No! It’s fine.”

“You sure? There’s plenty of room.”

“I’m sure. My friends and I do this all the time. Fly together, and—” Chenle gestured at the space between them, the way the two of them were stacked up next to each other like mochi cakes. “—and everything. I’m not a stickler for personal space. It’s fine.”

That was a lie. Chenle never flew with Renjun or Donghyuck. And he wouldn’t have let them hug his waist or fall asleep on him or literally anything of the sort—but Jisung didn’t need to know that.

“Oh, okay,” Jisung said. Quiet.

They flew in silence.

  
  
  
  


After a moment, Victory burbled, a vibration that tingled up Chenle’s body and made his eyes feel hot. After a moment, she made the noise again, and Chenle rubbed his eyes tiredly.

“Later, darling, hmm?”

Victory usually did the burbling when they lay down to sleep, and Chenle’s closed eyelids would lessen the sting from the white. It was easier that way.

“No, let her,” Jisung said. “She’s singing.”

“Dragons don’t sing.”

“They do,” Jisung said. “Listen.”

As if the dragon could sense that her guest rider had given her permission, she began to burble more, the sound deepening, vibrations getting richer and harder, Chenle squeezing his eyes shut. The sky up here was silent except for the noise of the night, and the vibrations were starting to feel white, and now there were more of them. Jisung’s dragon began singing too. The combined vertigo made Chenle feel dizzy.

“Oh God,” he managed to say. “I— _ahh_.” He doubled over, letting go of the reins to reach up and hold his head.

“Chenle? What’s wrong?”

“Drawbacks,” he gasped out.

Gifts all came with drawbacks. It was their fatal flaw, their limitation. Chenle’s happened to be migraine-like headaches whenever dragons acted funny around him.

Jisung was silent for a moment in confusion, and then he snapped his fingers. “Oh! You must have draconic sensitivity. Don’t worry, I’ve studied this. Are you in pain right now? What does it feel like? Hold on.” He leaned forward. “Can you face me, real quick?”

Chenle stifled a noise of discomfort and tugged on his magical gift to allow him to disappear into thin air. Once he was in the limbo of the mirror realm, he was tempted to just stay in the in-between, where he wouldn’t hear the vibrations. Where his eyes didn’t hurt.

He heard Jisung speak his name, once, sounding a bit lost, and—ugh. Chenle blinked back into existence, this time facing him like he’d asked.

The position was awkward, because riders weren’t supposed to sit like this, but Jisung didn’t seem to notice as he reached forward. He hesitated, but only for a second, before his hands came to rest on either side of Chenle’s face and he leaned in like he was examining a particularly interesting toad.

“Oh gosh. Wow. Your eyes.”

“Park, are you gonna be helpful, or should I push you off this dragon?”

Victory was singing louder now. 

“Your eyes are so cool,” Jisung said. “They’re white. Wow. That’s—I can’t believe I’m seeing it up close. I’ve only ever heard of this in the textbooks! Okay, okay, what does it feel like? What do you hear?”

“It—it hurts.”

“Oh no. Do you want me to distract you?”

He nodded.

“Right. Okay. Your gift is actually something I’ve looked up a lot in the library, you know? It’s pretty rare, so I thought I’d get acquainted with the way it works. There’s this legend where supposedly, the first dragons were born on the occasion of a solar eclipse, when the light from the sun reflected off the surface of the moon to create a perfect eclipse-y effect. The reflection is the important bit. If you put it all together, a lot of theories support that draconian existence stems from the idea of perfect things ricocheting off perfect things to create a tesseract of perfection that allows for teleportation and dissipation. And that’s all pretty much distilled into gifts like yours—they let you reflect yourself from mirror to mirror.”

“Basically you’re saying I’m a dragon in disguise?” Chenle rasped.

“Yes. Well, no. No? I don’t know. Your powers are draconian in nature, that’s all. Most gifts come from that of mythical animals.”

“Like what?”

“Like, phoenixes are immune to fire, so someone with the ability to control sparks and flames might be descended from one,” mused Jisung. “Like Jiyoon, from the stables. You know?”

“Are you saying Jiyoon’s part bird?”

“No! I’m saying she’s just got some similarities with birds.”

The vibrations were pulsing through Chenle’s scalp but he bolstered his way through it. “You’re saying she’s a bird furry. A feathery. Or her parents were. Somewhere in that tangent.”

“ _No_ ,” Jisung said. “It’s not like one of her ancestors mated with a phoenix to get the power into their bloodline. Rather, it’s probably more like—a phoenix decided to bless the family with its magic powers and then the blessing emerged through Jiyoon’s abilities. That’s all. How’s your head? Does it still hurt?”

“Mm,” said Chenle, and Jisung nodded in comprehension.

“Victory? Muffin? Please stop singing! Please? That’s a good girl. Yes, just like that,” Jisung said.

And like that, the dragons were quieting down. The recession of the vibrations was almost if not more painful than the vibrations themselves—this was crazy. Chenle never _asked_ to be blessed with crazy baconic (draconic??) powers. Why couldn’t he have been born with some other gift? Stifling a groan, Chenle dipped forward, trying to hunch over into a ball, except Jisung was in the way, and so basically Chenle ended up on top of his lap with his face squished into Jisung’s shoulder.

To his surprise, the other didn’t move away.

“Breathe,” said Jisung patiently. “It’ll be okay.”

“It hurts. It really hurts.”

“Everyone has drawbacks. You’ll be okay.”

Chenle shut his stinging eyes and breathed in Jisung’s smell. He smelled like dragon, like hay, and like the faintly scented shampoo he used when he showered in the mornings. 

A long while passed. Minutes, or dozens of minutes. The clouds slipped past them as the dragons descended back toward the stables, and Chenle found it easier to breathe, the pain in his eyes fading away faster and faster. He let out a long sigh of relief.

Chenle dragged his face out of Jisung’s shoulder when he sensed it was time. Jisung stared back at him, his pretty (pretty? What?) pink-brown hair tousled by the wind, his brown eyes wide. Caught off-guard, Chenle cleared his throat.

“Uh. Thank you for making them stop.”

“Yeah, no problem. I didn’t know that draconic sensitivity could get so intense,” said Jisung. 

“Usually I can handle it when Victory does it, but . . . well, two dragons at once is too much to handle.”

“Yeah.”

They were silent for the rest of the ride. They didn’t talk about it after it was over, either. Didn’t talk about the way Jisung’s breath had felt so warm against the side of Chenle’s neck, didn’t talk about the way Jisung’s arms stayed around Chenle’s waist almost as if he wanted to hold him close and make him feel safe. The next morning, they were back to their usual squabbling, both of them acting like nothing had happened—the familiarity was preferable and easy and less frightening to Chenle. He resolved not to think about it again. He wouldn’t think about the heart-pounding moment of them together in the sky on top of Victory, of which he was sure something had changed—if Jisung could pretend it didn’t happen, then so could Chenle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry that last scene was so long im brain fried rn cuz i just impulsively wrote and added like 3k to this chapter under the span of 2 hours but- anyway yes. ace i hope you enjoyed
> 
> anyway ch.3 coming your way reaaaaal soon :D keep a lookout


	3. junior year pt.1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "park and i are just friends", insists poor gay chenle, for the 89348034th time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry this is late~~ the original plan for this chapter ended up becoming so long that i cut it into two! hope no one minds.
> 
> cw // there's needles in this chapter. a safety pin, to be exact, for the purpose of an amateur ear piercing. i dont describe it graphically at all but please do proceed with caution!

Progress was being made elsewhere. By junior year, Chenle thought he could write a sitcom revolving around Renjun and Donghyuck’s hilarious romance saga. Donghyuck started dating someone in the beginning of the year in hopes of making Renjun jealous, and Chenle didn’t think it would work but it _did_. The problem was, by the time that Renjun pinpointed the reason why he was crabby whenever he saw Donghyuck holding hands with his new girlfriend, Donghyuck had gotten over his crush on Renjun and had started committing to a healthy long-term relationship with said girlfriend. In conclusion, everyone here had impeccably bad timing. Go figure.

The drama wasn’t limited to just there. There was an entire kettle of tea to be spilled with the dragon riding team this year. Since the team’s more forbidding members (Chenle coughed: _Irene_ ) had graduated and left the academy at the hands of the once-juniors now-seniors, everything was quickly evolving (or devolving, depending on how you looked at it) in terms of who was dating who and what kind of stuff was allowed in an environment that was had always been purely platonically work-related as per Irene’s old rules.

Yerim started going out with fellow defender, Saeron. A transfer student named Dejun had joined the team early in the semester and both Shotaro and Yangyang couldn’t stop simping over him. Then there was the love pentagon going on between the senior midfielders who were apparently vying for the heart of one Kim Jiwoo, a perky and sweet girl in their grade who came to all their practices and cheered them on. 

One day at practice, after at least several weeks of discord between the midfielders, Chenle reined in his dragon just long enough to stop by the pews and ask Jiwoo breathlessly, “Hey are you aware that Sooyoung and Jungeun are fighting over you?”

She looked up and grinned, flicking one of her long brown braids over her shoulder. “And if I am?”

Chenle laughed. “You gotta do something about it. At this rate they’ll tear the team apart. I think they’re actually ready to go to war over you.”

He hadn’t meant to tell her that much, but Jiwoo’s face fell. “Oh. I’m . . . I guess I’ll talk to them. I’m sorry.”

The next day, Sooyoung and Jungeun sulked the whole time. Jiwoo was nowhere to be seen in her normal spot in the pews.. Chenle couldn’t help but feel like he’d ruined something that hadn’t been his place to ruin—but at the same time, he felt the need to protect his team, because to him winning the trophy at national’s was massively more important than any fleeting high school romance. Surely, soon all three of the girls would be back to normal.

When he told his older sibling Amber about this in a letter, they had seemed surprisingly less enthused about it than he was.

 _Well, Lele, I’m glad everything was resolved okay,_ they wrote. _But just so you know, just because a romance occurs during high school doesn’t always mean it’ll be fleeting. Who knows? Destiny is of the essence._

Most of what Amber said just went over Chenle’s head. (It didn’t help that for a good few minutes he’d struggled to put together the fact that Amber had been talking about _destiny_ destiny and not Amber’s dragon, who was coincidentally named Destiny.)

 _By the way,_ they had added in their letter, _how’s your roommate this year?_

 _You mean Jisung?_ wrote Chenle. _Yeah haha we . . . uh, we’re rooming again, this year._

_What?? Really? I thought you said you hated your roommate!_

_I never said that,_ argued Chenle, knowing that he had said exactly that in his letter to Amber one year ago the first day he was forced to room with Jisung as a sophomore. _We’re chill now. It just ended up like this._

He wasn’t lying. The thing was, the academy had a specific way of assigning roommates: if after a year of rooming with someone, one or both of you decided that you no longer wanted to remain together, then you had to file a request for a transfer. If you didn’t file a request, then you were automatically paired with the same person. And so, the day the transfer requests were due, Chenle had felt all sorts of antsy (he couldn’t figure out why. Maybe he’d had too many milkshakes) and in the end, filing a request unfortunately slipped his mind (read: he purposefully avoided going anywhere near the student housing office).

Chenle never brought it up and neither did Jisung. When the year was over, expected to return the following semester with a new room assignment, but to his surprise when he returned for junior year his info sheet still had the numbers 704 written on it.

He had taken his bags up to 704 and opened the door without knocking. Maybe it was possible that he’d still be in this room yet he’d have a new roommate . . . ? Surely Park hadn’t somehow neglected to ask for a room transfer.

But there he was. Jisung looked up from his desk and broke into a smile that he quickly disguised with a cough.

“You . . . ?”

“Me,” agreed Jisung, standing up to greet him. God, he’d gotten taller over the summer. Chenle set his suitcases down with a hard _clunk_ as he continued to peer at the other boy. “Did you pierce your ears again?”

“What? I—yes. But that’s not—”

“Come on,” said Jisung, waving him over. “Sit down. Well, unpack your stuff and then sit down. I watched some chess tutorials over the summer and I think I can beat you now. Do you have your chess board with you?”

Chenle nodded slowly.

“That’s what I thought. Now hurry up, will you? You look like a scarecrow. Standing there all stiff.”

“ _You’re_ a scarecrow,” Chenle muttered, getting into motion. Jisung had really gotten way too tall. It wasn’t fair.

They played a game of chess, and then another, and in the evening they decided to microwave some macaroni and cheese so they wouldn’t have to trek all the way down to the dining hall which would probably be overrun with freshmen rats. It was as if nothing had changed. Maybe nothing had changed after all. That night, when he was lying in bed listening to the familiar rhythm of Jisung’s breathing, he decided not to read too much into the fact that obviously neither of them filed a transfer request. And that neither of them wanted to admit it. It didn’t mean anything, did it? They were probably both just lazy. Yes, that was it. Laziness. Chenle rolled over on his bed, drawing the blankets further up to his chin, and let out a small, soft kind of sigh. At this rate, he’d have senioritis not two days into junior year. It was practically inevitable.

###

“It’s really hard rooming with my crush,” moped Renjun. “You know what I mean, don’t you, Lele?”

It was near Halloween, and in their joint magicks class the two of them were studying the history of witches with pumpkin transfigurations and other Halloween-y topics. Cheesy, but enjoyable. Chenle had stopped paying attention a while ago and was now just folding an origami pumpkin out of his spare paper.

“Come again?”

“Rooming. With my crush. It’s hard.”

This wasn’t the first time Chenle had listened to Renjun moan and groan about how sharing his dorm with Hyuck was quite possibly the greatest tragedy that could have ever occurred to him this year. “I wouldn’t know,” said Chenle mildly. “I’ve never roomed with a crush before.”

“It’s just—he smells really strong,” said Renjun, idly filling out today’s class’s worksheet. “Like coffee and grass. It’s nice. It makes me feel safe, like I’m wrapped in a perpetual Donghyuck hug. Nothing in the world smells like him—I _wish_ he knew how much I like him . . . .”

Chenle put down his origami down. “You’re still friends with each other, you know. You should talk it out.”

Renjun looked like he was about to cry. “I don’t know. What am I supposed to say? Hey, Hyuck. You smell nice. So nice that sometimes I take your T-shirts and wear them because they smell like home. Isn’t that cheesy? Isn’t that just awful?”

“Yes to both.”

“What’s wrong?” asked another voice. It was Jeno. They were sitting across the table, looking at Chenle and Renjun with a concerned face; it appeared Jeno had noticed the waterworks. “Is everything okay . . . ?”

“Not really,” muffled Renjun, his head was buried in his hands. Last year, he would’ve jumped at the thought of talking to Jeno. Chenle guessed that feelings came and went. “You ever wonder what to tell someone when they’re lovesick?”

“I used to be lovesick,” Jeno mused. “I think we all have.”

“I’m actively lovesick,” said Renjun. “Send help.”

Chenle watched as Jeno reached out and patted Renjun on the head. “There, there,” they said, sincerely, and it was probably the cutest thing Chenle had seen all week. Renjun looked up and blushed, and Jeno grinned in response, and they went back to doing their worksheet, except now Renjun wasn’t so close to crying, and Jeno was looking cheerful.

A love triangle was blooming. Ugh, romance was overrated. Chenle needed to get out of this hellhole.

###

November rolled around. For Chenle’s birthday he received a package from his family that contained set of brand-new butterfly-shaped charm earrings made of fairy silk. They glimmered iridescent in the light when he turned his head back and forth. He spent too much time admiring himself in the mirror during the times he was supposed to be practicing his mirror-porting. (He didn’t need the practice, anyway.) (At this point he’d gotten so good at mirror-porting that he sometimes ditched class just to glide around in the mirror realm and nap on top of Victory, or something.)

“And they float,” said Chenle excitedly, showing Jisung that if he tapped the earrings the butterfly charms began to flutter and flap. “Isn’t that cool? My sisters did me so good with this.”

“Are they enchanted or something?” asked Jisung, tapping the butterfly charm experimentally. He was sitting beside him on the grass at lunch. It was a lazy Saturday afternoon.

“Yep. Enchanted.” Chenle gave him a smile. “Like you, yeah?”

Jisung smiled halfway. “Like me.”

Jisung was getting better at flight. He could levitate for hours at a time now, so long as he had an empty stomach and a clear mind.

“What do you want for _your_ birthday?” asked Chenle. Jisung was a few months younger than him and would turn 17 in February.

Jisung looked thoughtful. “Not sure. My mum and dad usually get me a pair of socks, or something.”

“Socks.”

“Mhm.”

Chenle chuckled. “What if I got you a pair of attachable fairy wings? You could be open about your gift that way. Everyone would think you were part fairy.”

“I’m not a fairy,” said Jisung, “I’m taller than you!”

Chenle rolled his eyes. “Barely.”

The other stood up. “Wanna bet?”

Chenle got to his feet too, squaring his shoulders. The two of them stood there for a while, trying to measure how many inches of height were between them, until finally Chenle sat back down with a huff and Jisung laughed.

“Told you so.”

“I’ll catch up,” retorted Chenle, stuffing a handful of blueberries into his mouth. Jisung tried to grab some, but Chenle held the bowl away. “No, you don’t get any treats. Go away.”

“Aww, baby,” cooed Jisung, and simply floated up into the air and reached over Chenle’s head to grab the blueberries anyway. _Baby_. “Jealous? Don’t worry, it’s okay that Victory’s stirrups are fastened to the shortest length to match your legs. No worries, no worries. Hey—!” He was tugged to the ground by Chenle gripping his collar. “You can’t fault me! I’m just stating facts!”

“Go state facts to someone else, won’t you?”

  
  


When Jisung’s birthday rolled around, he really did only receive a pair of socks. They were woolen and striped, and they looked very comfy, but Chenle couldn’t help but wince at the sight of it joining Jisung’s collection of sixteen nearly identical pairs, all of them obviously from previous birthdays. He was a scholarship kid—his family was tight on money. It made sense. Chenle shouldn’t have cared about it at all. Yet the day after, he shoved a box of brand new riding shoes at Jisung and looked away and mumbled, “Happy birthday.”

It was just because Jisung’s communal riding boots were stinky and gross, that’s all. Chenle was just doing him a favor. As a friend. No, as a _roommate_. This way, his roommate’s feet would smell less pungent, and so their dorm room as a whole would be made more pleasant. Yes, yes. That was all it was.

###

“Chenle. Are you awake?”

Chenle stirred from under his striped blue blankets. “Hmggnhg?”

“I want to tell you something.”

“Wha . . . ?”

It was final’s week. Chenle was dead tired from doing so much procrastinating. He could barely peel his eyes open—it felt like he’d fallen asleep only minutes ago before Jisung’s annoying voice had woken him up.

“My voice is not annoying,” objected Jisung. “And yes, you literally lay down three minutes ago. I didn’t think you’d knock out so fast.”

Chenle sat up, blinking blearily. Jisung was sitting upright in his own bed across the room, dressed in flannel pajamas with his hair all floppy and messy.

“Didn’t mean to say that out loud,” said Chenle. “Fine, what is it?”

“I said, I want to pierce my ears.”

Chenle groaned and lay back down, yanking the blankets back up. “Let’s talk in the morning or something.”

“I think it’d be cool, that’s all," Jisung mumbled.

Chenle sat up again, intrigued by the other's tone of voice. “Piercings are cool, yeah. But only as long as you’re not copying my aesthetic here. It's copyrighted."

“Ew?” said Jisung. “No. I just want a piercing.”

“There’s probably some shops near campus who'll do it just fine. Once you get a break from all that schoolwork, you can go get it done.”

Jisung frowned. “But I want it right now.”

“Patience is a virtue. My mother always said not to be reckless when it comes to these things. Body things,” said Chenle, then regretted his voice of words.

“I’m not being reckless,” insisted Jisung. “I’ve thought about this for a while by now. You know how to do it, don’t you? You’ve told me you’ve done it for your siblings?”

Chenle gave him a slow look. “Are . . . you saying you want me to do it for you?”

Jisung nodded.

Ten minutes later, they were sitting on their dorm room carpet, brushing aside crumpled napkins stained with pizza grease from their takeout from hours ago that they hadn’t quite finished yet didn’t have the energy to clean up.

“Hold _still_ ,” Chenle muttered, fed up with how the other kept flinching away from his grip. “You’ll be fine. It only hurts for like, thirty seconds.”

“Now that I’m thinking about it, that’s a lot of seconds,” squeaked Jisung, like the coward he was. “Oh, geez. Can you run it through the flame again? Please?”

Chenle sat back onto his heels and did as he was asked, despite it being the fourth time he’d disinfected the safety pin using his lighter. “ _Remember_ , you can always back out of this. Do you want to back out of this?”

“No.”

He leaned back into aim the needle again. “Are you sure?”

“Jesus Christ, Chenle, _yes_.”

“Okay. I’m going to do it after a count of three.”

“Okay.”

“Three.”

Jisung took a deep breath.

“Two,” said Chenle, aiming the needle in the center of the lobe.

Jisung squeezed his eyes shut. He looked cute like this.

Chenle shook off the thought. “One,” he said, and shoved the needle through. Jisung let out a small noise that was more surprise than pain, and he was still recovering as Chenle carefully wiped the lobe clean again and fastened the safety pin shut. He made sure to praise him afterwards, telling him he’d been brave and he did well, all things that he’d never said to his sisters when he’d done this service for them yet for some reason wanted to say to Jisung. For the rest of that week, he caught him admiring the piercing in the mirror, and once it had healed enough for him to take the safety pin out he exchanged it for a silver stud that he then wore everywhere. The small stud was a token, of sorts, at least for Chenle, because it was a constant reminder of that night on they’d spent on their dorm floor side by side with a half-eaten pizza box between them and Jisung’s eyes scrunched shut while Chenle took his jaw in his fingertips to steady him.

Friends did things like that. They were just friends. 

###

Apparently, there were lots of things friends did.

“Hey,” said Renjun one day during study hall. His face looked pinched, in that way it did whenever he was concentrating really hard on his sense of smell. “Chenle . . . ? Where are you right now?”

“In front of you,” said Chenle obviously.

“No, yeah, but I can smell you as if you were sitting across the hall. That’s so odd. Hold on.” Renjun peered over his shoulder, trying to locate something.

Meanwhile Chenle said, “My odor? I think you mean _aroma_. I showered this morning, you know.” And he’d used his nice shampoo, too.

“Aha! It’s your hoodie. That’s your hoodie, right?”

Chenle frowned and twisted in his seat. His eyes widened. Sure enough, across the hall there was a lanky figure clad in an all-too-familiar hoodie. _Chenle’s_ hoodie. The dark green one, with the white hood and hem, with Chenle’s name custom-embroidered on the sleeves. 

“Hang on,” he told Renjun, and then in a flash he teleported through the reflective surface of Renjun’s satchel buckle, bouncing from the buckles of all the kids’ satchels until he materialized behind the hoodie thief.

He grabbed their shoulder and pulled them around to face him, tearing them away from their circle of friends.

“Hey, who are—?”

Oh. It was Jisung. He blinked at him in confusion, and Chenle let go of his shoulder, conscious of the way Jisung’s friends were looking at the two of them. Chenle could recognize some of them, like Jaemin, the wind sprite. He shook off his initial surprise and cleared his throat.

“Wanna tell me what you’re doing with my jacket?”

Jisung’s eyes widened and he looked down at the hoodie he was wearing. His face began to color. “Uh—oh, you noticed, huh? I didn’t think . . . ack, I’m sorry.”

His pink cheeks were perfectly framed in the warm, thick hood. Argh, he was so infuriating; he shouldn’t be allowed to be this cute—

“Who’s this, Sung?” asked one of Jisung’s friends.

“My roommate. Can you give us a minute?”

“His roommate,” murmured another friend, with a knowing look around at the other kids, who traded smiles. Jisung cast them an urgent look, one that Chenle knew well. It said _please don’t embarrass me, guys_. 

Just then, the tardy bell rang, signaling passing period was five minutes away from ending. The hallway began to disseminate, students trickling away to go to their next lectures. Jisung’s friends waved good-bye as they moved away to go to class. 

“Renjun’s sense of smell tipped me off,” said Chenle, as way of explanation.

“Ah.” Jisung lifted his sleeve to his nose and sniffed. “Smells like your new shampoo.”

Chenle perked up. “Yeah, the coconut one. You noticed!”

“Of course I did. It smells really nice.”

A beat passed. After a moment, Jisung seemed to realize what he’d just said and proceeded to quickly amend it. “I mean, it’s _lice_! It smells like lice! Not nice. And by that, I mean, I do not hate it. I don’t hate it. But that’s not why I took it, clearly, it was just a mistake and there’s nothing to it. Haha yeah no. I didn’t take it because it smelled like you, because obviously you smell like armpit, and no one would want to smell that, and—”

At this point Chenle knew him well enough to know that he blustered when he was lying. “You . . . took my jacket because it smelled like me,” he said slowly, and suddenly he remembered the way Renjun liked to steal Donghyuck’s T-shirts. _Perpetually wrapped in a Donghyuck hug,_ he’d said.

Just like that, the final puzzle piece fell into place in Chenle’s head.

He was so dumbfounded that he forgot to say anything. And he and Jisung just kind of stood there, looking at each other.

The second tardy bell rang. Chenle was going to be tardy.

“This conversation is not over,” he blurted out to Jisung. Then he turned and ran toward the closest windowpane, diving headfirst into it right into the mirror realm.

###

He didn’t see Jisung until the end of the day, after dinner, once they’d both returned to their dorm. 

“Hey, don’t put this blame on me, Zhong. You need to keep your things on your side of the room. It’s not—it’s not my fault that I got mistaken, okay! Sometimes mistakes happen!”

“Right,” Chenle said. “And that’s why the hoodie you’re wearing has the name Zhong written in big letters on the sleeves.”

Jisung stared at him, then looked down at the sleeves of the hoodie he was clenching in his fists. Sure enough, the Chinese characters for Chenle’s name were emblazoned down the sleeves in bright bold letters. Jisung made a face. “There was no way for me to know that. I don’t take Mandarin.”

“I wear that hoodie every day, Park.”

“So? Do you assume that I am actually interested in noticing the stuff you wear? Sorry Zhong, but that would require me giving two fucks about you. Which I don’t. Anyway I’m just offended that you would see me as someone who would steal your clothes. I did _not_ steal your clothes. Not on purpose.”

Chenle was trying to hold back his laughter. “Okay, whatever. Just hand my hoodie over.”

Jisung blinked down at the garment in his hands, then looked up. “Uh,” he said. “Do you . . . I mean—do you, uh, really need it back right away?”

Chenle raised an eyebrow. Jisung rushed on:

“I just wanted to wash it, that’s all! Out of courtesy.”

Chenle receded. “Oh. Uh, alright, then.”

Jisung bobbed his head in an awkward nod, then turned around and stood there for a full moment. Then he fumbled into motion, scooping up some dirty clothes to take to the laundromat wing with him. Chenle watched him, feeling curious. Park usually wasn’t so twitchy. Maybe he was having a bad day. Had Chenle pushed him too far?

“Hey, listen,” Chenle eventually spoke up. “I can take it to the laundromat. It’ll be faster.”

Jisung turned. “Mm?”

“I said I’ll take it. To save you the trip. That’s a lot of stairs you’d be walking.”

“That completely defeats the purpose of me trying to be gallant and charitable.”

“Gallant? You? Please. Just let me handle it. I’ll mirror-port; it’ll be fast,” Chenle said.

“Do you even know how to use a washing machine though?” Jisung asked.

Chenle stopped. One of his sisters back home had a cleanliness gift, meaning she could remove stains, smells, and germs from most organic items without a problem. That meant that after she got the hang of her powers, no one in the house ever had to use the laundry machines, since she took care of it without a problem. When Chenle had come here to the academy he hadn’t even considered that he’d actually need to do real laundry at school. And it still hadn’t hit him, he supposed. He was gross, okay? And lazy. He didn’t wash his clothes every day because he didn’t need to! Deodorant usually did the trick.

He scratched the back of his neck. “Uh—”

“You don’t know how to use a washing machine,” Jisung concluded. “Okay. Fine. I’ll go with you. That way it’s still charity.”

“Charity shmarity,” Chenle said, blustering past the fact that he had no idea what a washing machine even looked like. “Okay, whatever. I’ll let you tag along. Come on, let’s go.”

He went to the floor-length mirror that he keeps on his side of the room, waiting for Jisung to follow and stand next to him before he pressed his palm against its surface. The glass rippled like silver water. Chenle envisioned the laundromat wing on the other side of the reflection, scouting for reflective surfaces he could use as the second link transport, and finally landed on a mysterious reflective circle that seemed big enough.

Jisung hefted the laundry basket on his hip, then reached up and touched the mirror. Immediately the pliant, rippling glass shrank back to its rigid form. Jisung made a noise of surprise.

“Park,” Chenle complained.

“I didn’t know it would do that!”  
“You can’t touch it unless you’re holding onto me.”

“Holding onto you?” Jisung repeated. “What? Do I have to?”

“We’ve done this before. Do you remember? Last year, when we first showed each other our gifts?”

“I remember,” said Jisung, hotly, as if offended that Chenle would even ask. “But surely by now you ought to have gotten the hang of it to the point where you don’t need to touch me—”

“Oh, geez. Park Jisung needs to physically touch Zhong Chenle. What a war crime,” Chenle said, then swiftly grabbed Jisung’s elbow, opened the mirror portal again, and pulled the both of them through it.

Jisung let out an _eep_ and instinctively clung to his arm, shoulders hunching with his body half pressed up against Chenle’s. What a baby. Chenle focused on gathering his energy toward that mysterious circular disc in the laundromat. Aha—there it was. He stepped into it, his stomach swooping in that familiar feeling of stepping into an elevator that was moving much too fast.

Jisung, not so familiar to the sensation, squeaked and then seized Chenle’s hand, hiding his face in Chenle’s shoulder. Chenle froze at the sensation of Jisung’s fingers, warm against his, and Jisung’s forehead, pressed into the crook of his neck. Suddenly the mirror realm felt much more humid than he remembered.

His lips opened to ask what the fuck he was doing, except his words came out as soundless silver bubbles. Ugh. He couldn’t talk in the mirror realm. He tried to nudge Jisung off him, but the other refused and held on tight, and Chenle turned his attention back to the mirrorport too late. He was verging on accidentally entering the wrong portal. He barely managed to wrench himself back to concetration just in time for the two of them to tumble into the laundromat as expected. 

Or, well, with one complication.

“Dammit,” Chenle muttered.

Jisung peeked one eye open. “Are we . . . ? Wait. Where are we?”

They were cramped together in a tiny, dark space, limbs folded and squished to make room for the laundry basket that sat on Jisung’s knees. The walls of the enclosure were dark gray silicone. Chenle craned his head up enough to see the reflective surface of a circular window a few inches above his head.

“Well, we’re here,” he said sullenly.

“Oh my God, what’s going on?” Jisung looked panicked. “What happened? We’re _inside_ the washing machine?”

Chenle reached up, jammed his free hand against the washing machine window, and tried his best to focus even though he was literally tangled in Jisung’s arms right now. The window’s glass rippled and he surged his way through, dragging the other with him, until they staggered on the other side panting and reveling in the fresh air. The laundromat was empty except for them, which was good, because Chenle didn’t think he could live down the embarrassment of having other students witness him pop out of the washing machine like a goddamn fetus. 

“What the fuck,” Jisung gasped.

“It was your fault not mine,” said Chenle right away.

“Oh my God. I didn’t even do anything! Ugh. I’m never teleporting with you again. Ever. That was horrible. We were _inside_ that thing?” Jisung shuddered as he threw a glance at the washing machine. “I’m claustrophobic, you know that?”

“Well, you were the one who decided to drape yourself all over me and make me lose my focus,” said Chenle.

“ _You_ were the one who decided not to let me _know_ that mirror-porting was the same as those Tilt-A-Whirl torture rides they have at carnivals!”

“I didn’t know you were such a wimp!”

“Take that back. I’m not a wimp,” Jisung snapped.

Chenle rolled his eyes, then flipped the washing machine cover open and reached for the basket of clothes that Jisung was carrying. With a jolt he realized that their hands were still connected. Jisung seemed to notice at the same time—abruptly he let go and cleared his throat, avoiding Chenle’s gaze.

Once they’d put the load into the washing machine, Jisung filled the compartment with the sweet-smelling soap, then closed the lid and pressed Start. The washing machine began to rumble. Thank God Chenle hadn’t accidentally teleported them into the washing machine _while_ it’d been running. That would’ve been a lawsuit for sure. (He would’ve sued Jisung for damages. After all, _he_ was the one who grabbed his hand out of the blue. Since when was that allowed? Completely unacceptable.) Chenle was feeling funny, now that he thought about it—his cheeks were warm and his fingertips were tingling. Oh no. Had Jisung given him a virus? By touching his hand with those germy fingers of his? This couldn’t be good.

“I’m going to the nurse,” he said aloud.

“Right now?” said Jisung, with surprise. “You need to take me back to the dorm first.”

“No,” said Chenle, “don’t you need to be here to take the clothes out once they’re done? I thought that was how these things worked.”

“Yes, well, they won’t be done won’t be for an hour, and I have stuff to do. Homework and things. Take me back,” said Jisung.

“I thought you said you never wanted to teleport again?” Chenle said. “And anyway, this is an emergency. I really do have to go. See you, loser.”

With that he slipped back into the closest washing machine reflective lid circle with an aim to go right to the nurse’s office. Ugh, his face was warm. He was definitely getting a fever. Park Jisung was a dangerous guy—Chenle made a mental note never to lay a finger on him again.

###

The next time he and Jisung played chess in their dorm, they sat side-by-side, as Chenle coached Jisung on how to become a better player so that Chenle could at least have _some_ competition to make things less incredibly dreary. Chenle showed him what a queen trade was, then walked him through the steps of the Sicilian Defense, but when he looked up to see if he was following along all he saw was Jisung smiling at him in a goofy sort of way.

When Chenle asked him what was wrong, Jisung said, “I just like that you know how I always overuse my queen. And that you know I always like to play black, so you’re teaching me maneuvers for black.”

Chenle huffed. “Of course I know that. I play you every day. Correction: I own you in chess every day.”

Jisung picked up his queen’s figurine and moved it across the board, stopping in front of the other queen. Before Chenle could tell him that that had been a terrible move, Jisung said, “Look. Now they’re together!” And Chenle stared at him and stared at him until Jisung said “why are you looking at me like that?” and Chenle said “no reason” even though he knew, he knew, he knew.

It was that he had wanted to kiss him.

###

Oh dear. Oh, no.

Why the hell did Chenle want to kiss him?

In that moment, he just wanted to reach out, and take his face in his hands, and draw him close, and press their lips together; it would’ve been so easy and yet he couldn’t fathom why he would ever be overcome with such an idea. This was Park. _Park_. This was his so-called archenemy. Archenemies didn’t kiss archenemies!!!

Something was wrong, Chenle could feel it. There was something here that he was missing.

He needed to call in the big guns.

_Dear my lovely lovely wonderful beautiful jie Xuan Yi,_

_You’re studying to become a doctor, right? I think I need medical attention. Been feeling weird lately. The school nurse has told me multiple times that nothing’s wrong with me but I’m convinced she’s only saying that._

_When I’m in my dorm room (for some reason it’s usually my dorm room) my face feels perpetually hot, and sometimes the back of my neck gets warm too. And then my fingers tingle. I laugh too much. Also, there’s times when I’ll even feel breathless, like I’m, I don’t know, nervous or something. Ahh, I’ve never felt this way before. I’m definitely coming down with something, aren’t I?_

_Signed, Chenle_

_Dear my pimply and pubescent younger brother Chenle,_

_Oh dear. You’re not on drugs, are you? Have you been seeing anyone lately?_

_Lots of love, Xuan Yi_

_Dear jiejie,_

_No I’m not on drugs. If I even looked at a substance the wrong way, coach would kick me off the team in a heartbeat. As for your other question . . . What do you mean, have I been seeing anyone? I’ve been seeing the school nurse of course._

_Chenle_

_Lele,_

_That wasn’t what I_ — _oh, forget it. Look. What I would say is that if you feel something’s funny with your dorm room, you should probably clean out all those old candy wrappers in that trash can of yours, and then you ought to wash those mud-stained knee guards you use during riding practice. Make your space clean. Maybe your dorm is just super stale and you need to get some house plants to circulate the fresh fresh air?_

 _Also, forget whatever your coach said they’d do_ . _I know for a fact that Mom would evict you from the family tree if you ever even_ thought _about a substance the wrong way lmao._

_love, Xuan Yi_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> take a shot every time chenle says something along the lines of "we're just friends"
> 
> i'm working on trying to be less self-conscious about my work when I post it! meaning, I wont reread it 40 times the way i typically do to make sure it feels perfect and fleshed out. rather, i've come to a realization that not everything i write has to be a masterpiece; it's okay for me to just post what I have written because, after all, I wrote it! And I liked writing it and I like reading it and it's- yes. That's my take on, like, self-esteem, and writer stuff. good talk ,glad we had it
> 
> the 4th chapter will be out in about a week! plz leave comments to give me support uwu
> 
> ~ yerin 01182021


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